Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 1, February 2001 | Page 121

British Film Comedy

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ous local venues, including The Comedy Store in London. In 1980, Edmondson
co-founded the comedy troupe The Comic Strip, serving as actor and writer, at the
Boulevard Theatre (which evolved into the successful television series).
In 1982, Mayall and Edmondson co-created the hit show The Young Ones,
which parodied an early 60s film starring British pop star Cliff Richard. The se
ries, which ran from 1982 to 1984, was a further extension of the pair’s violent
brand of domestic comedy - in this case, chronicling the misadventures of four
college students rooming together, who live in a state of perpetual filth and penury,
punctuated (naturally) with marathon bouts of brutal physical comedy. This led to
a series of episodes of The Comic Strip television series, and a savage television
satire entitled The N ew Statesm an, in which Mayall portrayed Alan B’Stard, a
vicious Tory politician who relentlessly schemes, swindles, and connives his way
to fame and fortune. The series, which lasted from 1987 to 1994, firmly estab
lished Mayall as one of the most energetic and outrageous members of the new
school of British comedy, while at the same time Mayall was teaming with
Edmondson on the Bottom teleseries, which chalked up 18 episodes on the BBC
between 1991 and 1995.
This is just the briefest sketch of the pair’s work during this period; they also
appeared in a variety of touring theatrical presentations (such as H ooligan's I s
land), while Edmondson also directed several rock videos, along with a host of
other writing, performing and theatrical ventures, including a well-received re
vival of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting f o r G odot in 1991 at the Queen’s Theatre in
London, in which Adrianson and Mayall co- starred. This unrelenting spate of ac
tivity came to an abrupt halt when Mayall was nearly killed in a freak motorbike
accident in April, 1998, at his home in the English countryside. Mayall’s recovery
was long and painful, but by 1999, Mayall and Edmondson were once again ready
to embark upon a new venture, one which would push their brand of social criti
cism to a new level - G u est H ouse Paradiso, a feature film that Mayall and
Edmondson co-wrote, and Edmondson directed. At this writing, it seems unlikely
that the film will be distributed in the United States, but it opened to rapturous
audience response, and predictably brutal critical reviews, throughout England
and the rest of Europe in December, 1999. In a sense, everything that Edmondson
and Mayall have been working up to is encapsulated in this film, which is a bril
liant and unremittingly savage attack on the crumbling facade of the British lei
sure industry.
G uest H ouse P aradiso takes as its central situation the premise that, in some
peculiar fashion, Eddie and Richie have come into possession of a spectacularly
rundown guest house located at the edge of a steep cliff in the English countryside,
which is also conveniently situated next to a malfunctioning nuclear power plant.
The guest house has one or two permanent residents, most notably Mrs. Foxfur