Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV is a British comedy sketch series written by and starring comedian Victoria Wood, with appearances from Julie Walters, Celia Imrie, Duncan Preston, Susie Blake and Patricia Routledge. The show was televised on BBC2 between 1985 and 1987 and included sketches that became famous in the United Kingdom.
The show was created when Wood was enticed away from rival television network ITV in 1984. She wrote every episode and the synopsis of it for Radio Times. The series led to spin-off script books, video tapes and DVDs.
The show won BAFTA Awards for all its episodes and, in 1996, was awarded all-time "Favourite Comedy Series" by the BBC.
The show's opening sequence is a stop motion sequence made by Aardman, known for Wallace and Gromit.
Background Wood was a television personality who spent most of her career working for the rival network ITV before As Seen on TV. She was enticed to work for the BBC with the promise of greater financial resources and a higher degree of creative authority in comparison to her previous work on shows like Wood and Walters.
To produce and direct the show, Wood chose Geoff Posner, who had worked on successful British comedy shows of the early 1980s such as Not the Nine O'Clock News, The Young Ones and the pilot of Blackadder.
Going into production in summer 1984 – with studio recordings in September and October – the first series of As Seen on TV was intended for broadcast later that year. As a theatre tie-in, Wood arranged a short stand-up tour with the same name as the show, to capitalise on her television appearances around the same time. This backfired when the BBC delayed the opening episode until early the following year.
Recurring sketches In addition to numerous standalone sketches and songs, the show featured many recurring items. Each episode began with Wood delivering a stand-up comedy monologue, often incorporating material she had previously tested during her stage tours. Throughout the following half-hour, several regular sketch items were typically included.
Linking many of the sketches was Susie Blake as a snobbish and arrogant television continuity announcer. Notable lines spoken by Blake include "We'd like to apologise to viewers in the North. It must be awful for them".
Patricia Routledge starred as Kitty, a self-righteous middle-aged spinster from Cheadle, who featured in a weekly monologue. To show the character's forthrightness, Wood had originally written Kitty's opening introduction as "Hello, I'm Kitty. I've had a boob off and I can't stomach whelks"; the "boob off" line was later changed to "I've given gallons of blood". The Kitty character shared similarities with Dotty, a character in one of Wood's earlier sketch shows, Wood and Walters (then played by Julie Walters).
Margery & Joan featured Walters (as Margery) and Wood (as Joan) parodying banal daytime television magazine shows.
Gail and Carl was a regular sketch in series one featuring Andrew Livingston and Victoria Wood as a young, naïve northern couple. For example, Carl, in response to being asked where babies come from, replies, "You want to send off for a pamphlet. We've got one at home about lagging."
The He Didn't? sketches that featured in the second series starred Wood as Kelly Marie Tunstall, a delinquent teenager standing at a bus stop telling her friend (Mary Jo Randle) ever more fanciful stories. "So, he walks over, right, an' 'e 'ad tattoos on 'is arms - anchor 'ere, microwave 'ere." "He didn't!" "He did." Each responds to the other after a ludicrous anecdote with the words "He didn't?" "He did!"
Acorn Antiques
Acorn Antiques is perhaps the best-remembered regular item from the series. It was a spoof soap opera set in an antiques shop, which, despite its provincial high street status, manages to supply an endless stream of works by Pablo Picasso, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. The two shop customers appearing at the start of each sketch, examining some antique, are always played by the same two actors. The sketch parodied the soap genre with its bad acting, ridiculous dialogue and contrived plot twists. Wood drew inspiration from the long-running ATV/Central serial Crossroads, The Cedar Tree and the BBC radio soap opera Waggoners Walk (1969–1980).
The sketches even led to a fanzine and appreciation gatherings, where fans would dress up as the characters. In 2004, in a poll on its website, Channel 4 voted Acorn Antiques the seventh best comedy sketch of all time. In 2005, Acorn Antiques was turned into a West End musical (see below).
Spoof documentaries Each episode of As Seen on TV featured a spoof documentary of "slice of life" stories, such as a girl who wanted to swim the English Channel and an old man moving into a home. Just An Ordinary School, for example, took a look at an exclusive girl's public school, with one pupil claiming, "there are all sorts of girls here, even coloured girls, though they tend to be princesses mainly".
Another spoof was of a musical detailing the life of Bessie Bunter, entitled Bessie! The musical starts as an Andrew Lloyd Webber parody with the setting of a girl's private school but including issues such as the Spanish Civil War and the McCarthy era. On being asked about Bessie's fatness, the producer (Sir Dave) replies "it is a sort of mental fatness". The lead actress, Carla, belts out in rehearsals one of the songs, "One Day", despite insisting she has "pneumonia". To prepare for the role, she starts with the bra, and then everything falls into place. Later, "Bessie!" is completely rewritten, and the previous cast is sacked, as it is, after all, a musical about "a big fat girl." Meanwhile, Carla is crying and being comforted by her colleagues but further upset by Sir Dave telling her to "get the fuck out of here will you, Carla? We don't really want snot all over the plush, love." In this rewritten part of "Bessie," she is played by Victoria Wood, who sings an impossibly glamorous and upbeat number. However, she complains at the end that "you're going to have to change this floor."
Usually lasting around five minutes, the spoof documentaries were narrated by a largely off-screen reporter in the first series and presented primarily by Corin Huntley (Duncan Preston) in the second series. It was a continuation of style for Wood, who had previously produced similar pseudo-realistic spoofs such as The Woman Who Had 740 Children and Girls Talking for Wood and Walters.
One-off sketches
The show featured many, often acclaimed, one-off sketches, like Waitress (popularly known as Two Soups), where Julie Walters plays an elderly deaf waitress who takes an incredibly long time to take an order for two bowls of soup. In 2004, British television network Channel 4 (in a poll conducted on its website) awarded it "27th Best Comedy Sketch Of All Time". Walters said "she [Wood] knows I like playing old women. Why? Because I am one! I love the shape of them."
Classic Coronation Street was a recreation of 1960s Coronation Street. It starred Wood as the show's gossiping Ena Sharples, with Julie Walters as Martha Longhurst and Lill Roughley as Minnie Caldwell, with Ena telling them the "gossip" she has heard about the show's plotlines for the next two decades. The sketch was written with a detailed knowledge of the soap opera's past: "That stuck up Ida Barlow, who's no better than she should be... it'll not be too long before she falls under a bus! That Harry Hewitt'll likely get crushed under the axle of his own van, and as for Valerie Barlow – and if this isn't judgement for setting 'erself up in 'er own front parlour as a so-called hair stylist then my name isn't Ena Sharples – from what I hear, it's two clogs to a thrupenny bit that she'll electrocute 'erself with 'er own 'airdryer." This sketch's accuracy earned Wood praise from Doris Speed, who had played Annie Walker in Coronation Street from 1960 to 1983.
Giving Notes featured Walters as the leader of an amateur dramatics company giving notes to her cast: "I can't say this too often: it may be Hamlet, but it's got to be fun, fun, fun!" Shoe Shop also starred Walters as a mad shoe shop saleswoman and Wood as her customer. In the sketch she delivers Wood a pair of high-heeled shoes, though Wood requested a flat pair. Walters snaps off the heels and replies, "flatter now".
Medical School had Wood as a nervous interviewee, applying to become a medical student. Asked what the last book she read was, she replies "Othello. It's a book by William Shakespeare, of the Royal Shakespeare Company". In On The Trolley, Wood played a waitress in a restaurant, responding to any order of food with the repetitive phrases "Is it on the trolley?" and "Can you point at it?" This was Wood's personal favourite sketch in the series.
Self-Service featured Wood and Walters as two friends at a self-service café. It features many classic lines including, "Aren't prawns an aphrodisiac?" "Well, I wouldn't put it past them." and "Can we get by, we're not having a sweet." "Very wise with those hips!"
Music Music was featured regularly on the show, often with Wood singing self-penned songs while accompanying herself on the piano. The best-remembered tune from the show is the five-minute-long " – Let's Do It." It concerns a couple, Barry and Freda; she is hungry for sex, he is not. It climaxes with the lines "beat me on the bottom with a Woman's Weekly, let's do it! Let's do it tonight!". The song was performed numerous times by Wood in her live performances. Wood said of the number: "A joy to write, a sod to learn, and I daren't finish a show without it. The first time I performed it, a woman at the stage door asked, 'How long have you been cross-eyed?'"
As Seen on TV featured other musical styles: So Pissed Off With Love, a duet with Wood and Denis Lawson; Keep On Shopping, an epic musical number about shopping; At The Chippy, with Wood, Walters, Meg Johnson and others singing in tribute to their local fish parlour; Marie And Clarie And Min, featuring Wood, Johnson and Hope Jackman as three old women on a seaside trip as well as other numbers. The show contained a skit on the old "fill in" footage often slotted into scheduling to cover technical breakdowns: "I'm Gonna Knock, Knock, Knock on Your Knocker". Comedy sketches featured music, like the parody of the staging of a West End musical, Bessie, and a send-up of the Judy Garland–Mickey Rooney "let's put on a show" genre in "I'm Counting Moonbeams".
Preferring to work with people she knew, Wood hired David Firman to be musical director for the series. Firman had previously been musical director for Wood's play Good Fun.
Episodes
The series lasted for twelve regular half-hour episodes (and a final 40-minute special) between 1985 and 1987. All six episodes of the first series were broadcast between 11 January and 15 February 1985 at 9:00 pm on Friday evenings on BBC2.They followed the same format with an opening stand up monologue from Wood, followed by a mixture of sketches, songs and spoof mini-documentaries, with regular soap opera parody Acorn Antiques making its introduction. This first series reached 4.55 million viewers by the penultimate show, making it the tenth most popular programme that week on the channel. To Wood's surprise, the series then went on to win two BAFTA Awards (see below).
The second series of six episodes were broadcast between 10 November and 15 December 1986, this time on the (then) more popular Monday slot on BBC2. It followed a similar format to the first series. By the third week it was the number one most watched programme on BBC2 with 8.55 million viewers. Having scored an even bigger ratings and critical success than its previous series, its triumph even led Wood to be invited on that year's prestigious Royal Variety Performance.