The Young Ones

"A horrible, vile, disgusting sitcom about four students who live in the most revolting house in Britain", The Young Ones became an instant BBC comedy landmark in 1982 by launching an all-out assault on the moribund sitcom, mixing Monty Python-esque madness with post-punk anarchy. There are no real stories, only a succession of often hysterically funny scenes as ingenious gags collide with deliberately corny lines, cartoon-like ultra-violence, pop music breaks, surreal interludes with characters ranging from the Three Bears to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and gross-out moments based on various bodily functions and substances.
Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, Nigel Planer and Christopher Ryan are the four housemates: Rick (Cliff Richard-worshipping radical sociology student), Vyvan (violence-loving punk medical student), Neil (put-upon suicidal hippie) and Mike (self-styled cool guy). Alexei Sayle appears regularly playing various mad Russians. Taking a cue from National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) the show now seems to anticipate the teen gross-out flicks of the late 1990s but to far more amusing effect. In retrospect The Young Ones is cheerfully un-politically correct in a way which may shock more now than 20 years ago; certainly some of the insults and drug-taking would have trouble getting on TV today. The first series was followed by a second equally hilarious series; Mayall and Edmondson played essentially similar characters in Filthy, Rich and Catflap (1987) and Bottom (1991-5).

The second and final series of The Young Ones was screened in 1984 and continued in the anarchic, surreal, scatological, slapstick yet subtly satirical vein of the first series. When hippie Neil's blazer and furcoat-clad parents step horrified into the filthy student digs he shares with prissy sociology student Rick (Rik Mayall), the psychotic punk Vyvyan (Ade Edmondson) and wide-boy Mike (Christopher Ryan) a parody of The Good Life promptly ensues, signalling just what a giant leap this show represented from mainstream sitcom of the time.
Nigel Planer's put-upon Neil is as fine a creation as the putting-upon Vyvyan. Guest appearances from Alexei Sayle, Stephen Fry, co-writer Ben Elton and Jennifer Saunders among others confirmed The Young Ones' status as an academy for future establishment comedians. But Mayall's creation is still the show's greatest legacy: Rick is self-righteous to the point of fascism in his right-on-ness, a mass of studenty pretentiousness, pathetic inadequacy and egotism ("Hands up who likes me!"). Anything went in The Young Ones--talking hamsters and toilets, bizarre digressions into period sketches, subliminal images, guest appearances by bands from Dexy's Midnight Runners to Motorhead--yet through Rick in particular, the show implicitly mocked shopworn Goodies-style notions of "zaniness" ("You have to watch me, I'm a bit nutty!").

This series includes "Bambi", the University Challenge episode; "Cash", in which Vyvyan announces his pregnancy; and the final show, a parody of Cliff Richard's The Young Ones itself, in which the quartet exit ingloriously. The Young Ones is among the most youthful and radical of all sitcoms, yet it still manages to contain a timelessly astute critique of youthful radicalism--and bottom-burp jokes aplenty.