Early Sitcoms
Having developed a taste for narrative comedy with the exploits of Tony Meringue on the Kevin Greening show, McGibbon soon wrote a number of half-hour comedies for BBC Radio 4.
Routemasters (1999) was his debut sitcom, telling the tale of a time travelling art thief. The series starred the Nimmo Twins and LA Law actress Amanda Donohoe. It represented her official radio debut, excluding a number of incognito appearances in various sketches for Greening. Speaking to the Radio Times, she said that “I suppose I’m an intergalactic dominatrix. There are great humorous possibilities – like painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with white emulsion. In the end we discover Hildegard’s rather tawdry past and motives.” The series was written by McGibbon (who also played Raymond) with additional material by Rob Colley and Kevin Greening. Later BBC7 transmissions were cut to remove a subplot about castration.
Two series of I Think I’ve Got a Problem (2001 – 3) followed and were similarly fantastical. The sitcom was a musical about Tom Caine, a man with a band living inside his head. It was co-written with Nick Romero and starred Suggs (of the band Madness), Bob Monkhouse, McGibbon and Romero. Bill Nighy and Julia Deakin joined for the second series. The considerable amount of musical content was jointly composed by McGibbon, Romero and Suggs. Matthew Bannister described it as “Pennies from Heaven on acid". Gillian Reynolds summed it up as an “inventive commentary on humanity, cruelty, folly and the chaos of consciousness, all done in the style of a comic strip. It is original, bold amazingly brilliant.”
Dead Man Talking (2001) was a four-part series produced by Wise Buddah, again for BBC Radio 4. The format was a chat show in which John Bird probed famous people from history, all long since dead, amongst them Adam & Eve, Boudicca & Joan of Arc and Mary Shelley & Robert Oppenheimer. The series featured Fiona Allen, Jon Culshaw, John Sessions and Tony Slattery.
Andrew McGibbon also made regular appearances in Tom Jamieson & Nev Fountain’s Elephants to Catch Eels (2003 – 4), a sitcom about eighteenth century Cornish smugglers. In it he played Captain Marriot and the series ran for two series of six episodes. It co-starred Lucy Speed, John Bowe, Cameron Stewart, Martin Hyder, Julia Deakin and Mark Felgate, with Sheridan Smith joining for series two. It was produced by Jan Ravens.
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Famous quotes containing the word early:
“No two men see the world exactly alike, and different temperaments will apply in different ways a principle that they both acknowledge. The same man will, indeed, often see and judge the same things differently on different occasions: early convictions must give way to more mature ones. Nevertheless, may not the opinions that a man holds and expresses withstand all trials, if he only remains true to himself and others?”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)