Britcom Goes To The Movies

Is the art of parody the sole reserve of Americans? Well, us Brits have had a few jolly good cracks at it. Most recently, Fackham Hall. The star-studded Downton Abbey send-up from 2025, written by the Dawson brothers (one of whom is an Inman) and the Carr brothers (one of whom is the UK’s biggest stand-up of the 21st century).To round off the sixth series of BritCom Goes to the Movies, Rob and Guy...

At BritCom Goes to the Movies, we are dipping back into the world of Armando Iannucci. Last we heard of him on this show, he’d just adapted his hit sitcom The Thick of It into big screen success In The Loop, and eight years later was turning his attention to a farcical retelling of an actual moment in history with The Death of Stalin. Based on a French graphic novel telling of the Soviet dictator’...

Get on your dancing shoes and join Guy and Rob (because it only takes two to tango) for 2014’s Cuban Fury. Something of a passion project for Nick Frost, who basically wanted to learn how to dance and probably wanted to be the main character in a wish-fulfillment Rom Com. There’s some transatlantic crossover here as Rashida Jones of The Office, Parks and Rec, and being the daughter of famous peopl...

Episode Seven began life as a thread on Bluesky by our guest Tim Worthington. The font of all obscure pop culture knowledge was discussing with followers what the most obscure BritCom they'd seen at the cinema was. Needless to say, a lot of the answers were on our long list, but not Tim's choice. The Young Poisoner's Handbook is the darkest of all the dark comedies we've covered so far. Based on,...

Last time Kat Hughes joined Rob and Guy, the horror writer and critic had the misfortune of dissecting the Christmas family mess Nativity! This time she’s much more in her wheelhouse as we discuss Bloodbath at the House of Death. A vehicle for Britain’s best loved DJ Kenny Everett to take his brand of spoofing, innuendo and larger than life characters to the big screen after the success on both IT...

Now that’s enough of the 1970s, let’s move this series into the 20th century. Well, actually, our story for this icon of BritCom begins at the end of the 20th. Harry Hill won the Perrier award in 1992 and was quickly on TV and radio soon after. Rob and Guy take a particular look at The Harry Hill Show…or rather just Harry Hill as it was known on Channel 4 in the late 90s. To join the chaps is Harr...

We’re on a roll with the 70s sitcom spin-offs. Hot on the heels of George and Mildred and Mutiny On The Buses comes 1971’s Please Sir! This is, in no small part, down to our guest this week, Jason Hazeley, being the world’s loudest cheerleader for this film and its preceding sitcom. We didn’t even need to show him the list; he was straight in there for a personal favourite since his youth. But nev...

After some time away, we’re ready to dip back into the On The Busesverse. Our resident expert in all things Butler and Blakey, John Rain, returns to discuss the Empire Strikes Back of the trilogy. It’s time for Mutiny on the Buses. A mere year after the first film and backed by a (slightly) bigger budget, none of which the actors saw, the Ronalds, Chesney, and Wolf had forged a screenplay with muc...

Time to get our teeth into another straight spin-off. It’s a significant one at that. The final of the ITC/EMI/Hammer spin-offs of ITV sitcoms, which many credit as the death of the genre altogether. That’s right, it is the 1980 big-screen adaptation of the long-running sitcom that in itself was a spin-off. George and Mildred. Long-time listeners will know that in the first series, Rob and Guy wer...

No sooner are we gone than we’re back with a brand-new series. In series six, we’ll pass 60 films viewed and reviewed for a project that still has plenty of legs in it yet! But we begin this brand new series by embracing the familiar. Tom Salinsky returns to BritCom Goes to the Movies for the first time since episode six, and not only does he join for a film all three of us have seen before, all t...

Happy St David’s Day! To mark the occasion here at Britcom Goes to the Movies, we are celebrating one of Wales’ most beloved comedy sons, Rob Brydon, and…actually, it is just a ham-fisted way of doing a round table episode on Cruise of the Gods! This TV film was written by Tim Firth (remember him from our Blackball episode?) and contained not only some Britcom heavyweights of the time, but also gr...

Here at BritCom Goes to the Movies, we love each and every one of our listeners. That is why we’re giving you this Valentine’s present. Rob & Guy discuss their favourite British sketches of all time. To make sure there were no clashes, notes were compared before, duplicates removed, and of course, the arbitrary rule of no more than one sketch from one show per host.  These two top-ten lists have a...

Merry Christmas to our beloved BritCom Goes to the Movies listeners! Thanks for seeing in the festive period with us. This is our third Christmas episode, and while our previous two were a bit of a mixed bag, we’ve finally found a film we can all agree on: the 2009 classic, Nativity! Writer and director Debbie Isitt was already the pride of the West Midlands theatre scene before turning to film. H...

1991 was the year for beloved British comedy performers to try and make their names stateside.  We already heard about Rik Mayall’s experience with Drop Dead Fred, but the same year, Lenny Henry, riding high off the success of Live & Unleashed, was able to take advantage of a spot on a high-concept comedy caper vacated by Eddie Murphy (and others) called True Identity.  Were the Americans ready f...

There are a few entries from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant on our long list at Britcom Goes to the Movies, but we start with perhaps their least remembered and least successful offering, the period coming-of-age comedy/drama Cemetery Junction. In contrast, the pair’s second sitcom offering, Extras, is in the annals of the all-time great British comedy shows. A by-product of a newfound celebri...

We follow up a Goon-centric episodewith another Goon-centric episode! Hot on the heels of Spike Milligan’s Postman’s Knock comes Peter Sellers’ Two Way Stretch from 1960. A prison heist movie (our second after Get Santa), which has a little whiff of Porridge, just 15 years before. This is our 50th film profiled on the main series, and we couldn’t let such an important landmark go past without enli...

On Britcom Goes to the Movies, you are never too far from the next Goon-related movie. We last spoke in depth about Spike Milligan on our episode about The Bed Sitting Room. We’re going full Milligan again for his first starring role in a British movie, Postman’s Knock, and it is quite the departure for Spike. A role that perhaps you might expect somebody of the more Norman Wisdom persuasion to be...

What can you do during Covid Lockdown if you want some outdoor time but need to isolate? Go Medieval! That’s what Andy Riley, writer of Year of the Rabbit, Veep, and books such as the Bunny Suicides and Action Dude did, and guess what? It led directly to his first solo feature film screenplay, Seize Them! Riley, who had forged an incredibly successful writing partnership with Kevin Cecil, went it...

Where can you find the cream of Hollywood, rock and roll, and football punditry all on one suburban street? Surbiton, that’s where…or at least Shepherd’s Bush masquerading as Surbiton. We’re taking a trip to Stella Street on Britcom Goes to the Movies! That’s right, this late 90s cult, small-budget, and even smaller cast-list comedy had a 2004 big-screen adaptation! Something that seemed to pass a...

You all know the rules by now, here’s your Starter for Ten. What could be more British than University Challenge? One of the longest-running quiz shows ever on British TV, it has associations of class, difficulty, and unmitigated stress. The perfect setting for a rom-com then, or at least David Nicholls thought so. Long before One Day, the screenwriter was floundering somewhat with the small scree...

Who fancies a Piltdown Glory? Guy and Rob return to Tony Hancock territory for a second time, and this time they’re joined by some proper experts. Tim Elms, Martin Gibbons, and Jon Street from the Tony Hancock Appreciation Society, as well as the presenters of the Very Nearly An Armful official Tony Hancock podcast, join us to discuss The Punch and Judy Man, the 1963 film that marked a significant...

Could we finally have a contender for bottom of the league? Bottom of the barrel? Most certainly. Keith Lemon: The Film is widely regarded by critics as one of the worst British comedy movies of all time. Completely mauled upon its release and a disappointment at the box office in 2012, Leigh Francis (AKA Keith Lemon) was nevertheless and remains one of the most popular comedians on the small scre...

How time flies. It doesn’t seem feasible that we should be on series five already, but here we are. We begin with a huge figure in the British comedy landscape, The Banana Box. You may know it as Rising Damp, but Eric Chappel’s beloved sitcom began life as a stage play with this rather more visceral title. Indeed, everyone’s (least) favourite landlord Rigsby, although always portrayed by the magni...

On the 17th Sep 25, an event happened of such earth-shattering proportions that it would shatter the earth to its very core. Yes, BritCom goes to the Movies, did a Smashie and Nicey: End of an Era mid-season special. Harry Enfield's beloved characters (well, not by Radio 1 DJs) were to be retired after a changing of the guard at the BBC's flagship music station rendered their very specific brand o...

Here we are at the end of our St Trinian's bank holiday treat. The final episode sees Rob and Guy tackle the reboot(s) of the mid-00s. A kind of back to basics, borrowing heavily from Belles but with an updated 00s sensibility, which depressingly probably means more sexism if anything. An embarrassment of riches of a cast. Early roles for the likes of Gemma Arterton and Juno Temple, plus old hands...