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This surreal TV spoof came from the pens of Andrew Marshall and David
Renwick, subsequently co-creators of Whoops Apocalypse (ITV, 1982) and Hot Metal
(ITV, 1986-88). Although often described as a mix of sketch show and sitcom, End
of Part One is really a sketch show in which the sitcom element is merely one of
the sketches, albeit a recurring and extended one. With an obvious debt to Monty
Python - and perhaps especially Eric Idle's Rutland Weekend Television (BBC,
1975-76) - Marshall and Renwick (whose previous credits included sketches for
the likes of the Two Ronnies and Bruce Forsyth, plus the successful BBC radio
comedy The Burkiss Way) created a show of interlinked sketches parodying
anything and everything seen on TV. As well as the surreal element, they used
traditional sketch show humour, based on puns, sight gags and slapstick, with
the occasional topical aside, a taste of another show both were to be involved
in, Not the Nine O'Clock News (BBC, 1979-82).
In the first series, episodes loosely simulate an evening's TV (making for a
natural way to link the various sketches), complete with continuity announcers,
channel idents, soaps, TV programmes, TV personalities (such as David
Attenborough), end credits and more. Occasionally the sketches have a mildly
satirical edge (a regional TV channel, BBC East Anglia, is portrayed in
scratched black and white as slow, old and irrelevant) but most sketches never
stray beyond gentle spoof.
The series took its name from the parody soap that appeared throughout the
first series, complete with spoofed opening credits. It featured 'ordinary'
working-class couple Vera and Norman Straightman, whose quiet life is
interrupted by a motley stream of visitors and odd events. Two recurring
visitors are an unnamed, slightly camp male neighbour, oddly attired in suit and
headscarf, and 'Mr Sprote of Hackney', a scruffy individual who lives in their
sideboard and is treated like a pet.
The second series abandoned the loose structure of the first - though not the
preoccupation with television - and all but dispensed with the Straightmans.
They reappeared in the last episode, a black and white spoof Agatha
Christie-style whodunnit in which a roomful of characters is killed off one by
one until no suspect remains, whereupon the door opens and the Straightmans
enter, announcing that now that everyone is dead they can return to the
series.
Gosta Johansson
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1. Pope Clement At Large (1:06)
