ThiefHott Too much of everything

Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Supelice Dreadfully Boring

Celia A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

O2D I enjoy this show but it's very average. It's just him trying to make conservatives look as bad as possible and it's not always funny. The first season has some weird transvestite character that seems to have no reason to be there but it ends up being the funniest character. Having Charles Gray in two episodes really helped, they should have kept him in the show.

RaspberryLucozade This, in my opinion, is satirical comedy at its very finest. It was a vehicle created by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran to showcase the talents of Rik Mayall ( who had become a household name with viewers in the early '80's with 'The Young Ones' and 'The Comic Strip Presents' ) which came about after Mayall, who was impressed by their earlier hit 'Shine On Harvey Moon', had approached Marks and Gran to pen a show for him. The result was 'The New Statesman', made by Yorkshire Television in 1987.Here Rik played Alan Beresford B'Stard, a Tory MP for Haltemprice who has the largest majority of votes in The House Of Commons. B'Stard is a corrupt, sleazy, loathsome backbencher who only obtains his seat by default after plotting a fatal car crash between the Labour and Liberal Democrat candidates. His wife is Sarah, a devious bisexual who despises Alan but stays married to him for his money. Alan too only remains married to Sarah because her father, Roland Gidleigh Park ( played by the late Charles Gray ), controls the local Conservative party. In parliament, Alan shares an office with Piers Fletcher Dervish, a well meaning but extremely dim-witted MP who often finds himself involved in Alan's schemes and scams.In the first episode, Alan cleared a law which allowed the police to carry firearms, however the guns he supplied for them were defective an in another he engineered the liquidation of a company in which his wife has shares in. In a sketch created for 'Comic Relief' in 1988, we even saw Alan attempt to shut down the BBC.As the evil B'Stard, the late Rik Mayall was outstanding to say the least. He certainly was not recognisable as the goofy Rick from 'The Young Ones'. Marks and Gran's scripts cleverly combined visual slapstick comedy with satire. One of the most memorable recurring jokes in the series is Alan's inability to make sex last any longer than half a minute ( which he believes is a sign of virility ). Also excellent in the cast were the stunningly beautiful Marsha Fitzalan as Sarah and Michael Troughton as the dippy Piers. Rowena Cooper appeared in the first series as Alan's financial adviser Norman Borman, who is undergoing a sex change in order to elude a prison sentence.After series three, Alan deported from Westminster to Brussels to become an M.E.P and in the final episode, 'The Irressistible Rise Of Alan B'Stard', he became Prime Minister of Great Britain. It seemed by this point that the show had run out of ideas. In 1994, a special episode entitled 'A. B'Stard Exposed' was made for BBC Television in which Alan was interviewed by Brian Walden to reveal his vision of 21st Century Britain. This was indeed the last viewers saw of B'Stard.Like 'Spitting Image' and the later 'Drop The Dead Donkey', many of the topical references used in 'The New Statesman' have resulted in it looking dated. Nonetheless, it is one of the greatest sitcoms to emerge from the 1980's and proved that Mayall was capable of so much more than farting and hitting people with frying pans.

fibreoptic I watched this when i was a kid, i didn't really like politics but i liked this and Spitting Image. One of the reasons i think i watched this was because it was on on a sunday night and my mum let me stay up to watch it. I found it hilarious though and still do. I recently watched Series 1 and it dawned upon me that Alan B'Stard is infact a more evil version of Blackadder which is probably why i liked The New Statesman so much. I get more of the political jokes now but they are out of date and redundant but there's more to it than that. Will never be considered a classic due to it being about British politics but was one of the few great comedy sitcoms that appeared on ITV because most of the greats appeared on the BBC. I'd like to see it repeated so i hope some ITV or Sky executive reads this and sorts it out.

Mmyers2003 Rik Mayall always makes me laugh i don't think hes ever done a single duff sitcom or comedy routine. Its one of the rare ocassions hes not working along side Ade Edmundson but he still manages to do well. Its a shame theres no reruns of this but then i'm buying them on DVD. I guess we'll have to wait until The tories come back into power before we'll see this rerun. Someone should maybe try the same thing with the labour party.TC Raymond, Benny hill and the carry on films are old hat and out of date. You'll have to accept that and move along. In my opinion they were boring and i'm glad we've left that era. You don't seem to like alot of comedy do you? Oh well your choice I guess.