Episodes
The series lasted for 12 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 9:00pm 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 8 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.
Between series one and two, Wood said she thought it was a mistake to do another As Seen On TV series, and had attempted to write a play instead: "I've been seeking to branch out, but it hasn't happened. I wanted to do something different before I went back on TV." However, she soon decided that the play was "too Alan Ayckbourn", threw it away and began writing the second run instead. She aimed to write 18 minutes of script a week. In the end it took six months to complete, an experience she did not enjoy. "You pour everything you've got into one sketch and you don't ever want to write another - only you realise there are fifty-nine more to go before you've got enough for a series, it's torment".
The series returned for a 40-minute special on 18 December 1987. Wood defined 'special' as "ten minutes longer and I've splashed out on a new bra".
She said of her decision to finish the show, "I love television, and if it was possible for me to work in it more, then I would; but because of the position I've put myself in of being the only writer on the show, I can't physically work in it that often. I've just had it with sketch shows for a bit – people have liked it, and I want to stop while they still like it."
The Radio Times Guide To TV Comedy described Victoria Wood As Seen On TV as having "a regular company of fine performers, good production values, incisive scripts and a snappy pace... the show rarely dipped below brilliant and featured numerous delights, such as Wood's hilariously authentic dialogue and her surprisingly stinging satirical characters".
Read more about this topic: Victoria Wood As Seen On TV
Famous quotes containing the word episodes:
“What is a novel if not a conviction of our fellow-men’s existence strong enough to take upon itself a form of imagined life clearer than reality and whose accumulated verisimilitude of selected episodes puts to shame the pride of documentary history?”
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)
“Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at parties, and suddenly we realize that those two very difficult years of our lives have become lumped together into a few episodes that have lodged in our memory in a standardized form, and are always told in a standardized way, in the same words. But in fact that lump of memories has nothing whatsoever to do with our experience of those two years in the army and what it has made of us.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)