The Comic Strip, Part 2 - HUNNNH! Good God, Y'all!

"War" - January 3, 1983

I thought that it would be quite a while before I got to an episode that I'd never seen before. Nope, here's War. It's only the second one, and I have no recollection of it whatsoever. I can think of several reasons for this:

1) I simply kept missing it. This is not at all impossible.

2) I did see it and completely forgot it. This is plausible, but unlikely.

3) It wasn't broadcast in America due to some legal reason involving ownership or contracts or something. I have found no mention of this anywhere.

4) It wasn't broadcast in America due to its excessive violence. This seems most likely to me, even though most of the violence portrayed consists of cutting to a close-up of another character as they make a face like they've been suddenly possessed by the Mac OS startup chime, and having a crew member either throw a pan full of giblets at them or fire a squirt-gun full of ketchup into their eye.

But I digress.

There isn't that much on-line in terms of Comic Strip Presents Appreciation Data extravaganza, but just about all the site that have an episode guide make mention of the Warsaw Pact.

So I had a quick study up on the Warsaw Pact.

This episode is not really about the Warsaw Pact.

The story: It is 1985 (the near future). England is at war and has been invaded. By everyone. Russians, Americans, Chinese (or Japanese, I couldn't quite sure) Australians, Mexicans, British, British pretending to be Mexicans. Everyone.

And they are all insane. Not just your standard "war is hell" shell-shock insane. We're talking Coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs insane.


A young couple escapes the carnage of London to start over in the countryside, get separated immediately and spend the rest of the episode being passed along as various groups of international loonies kill each other and themselves.

That's all.

I suppose that the difference between 1983 and 2005, is that the concept that an armed invasion leads to horribly awful chaos and the only way to survive it is to become completely detached from reality is not as surprising now as it was then. Combatants in real life are capable of behaving just as erratically as they do here. They might not wear a Bozo wig, but that really isn't the point anymore.

Even though this episode was totally new, it brought back all of the elements that I enjoyed about The Comic Strip. Here all of the "regulars" show up, in multiple roles, acting (and overacting) their asses off. Some of the fun of having this as a companion to The Young Ones is watching and suddenly realizing "Hey, that's Rik! And that's Vyvyan."

I will now take this moment to say something that I have the impression I will be saying a great deal as this project continues: Nigel Planer is one of the greatest actors walking the planet.

Everyone in the main cast gets scenes that an actor would kill for: Rick Mayall's disengaged American General, Jennifer Saunders' fatalistic cafe waitress and Daniel Peacock (whatever happened to him?) and Dawn French as the stunned Londoners wandering about like New Romantic Candides. But it is Nigel Planer's Russian soldier, who shows up at the end and seems to be the only one of the entire lot that seems to actually understand the gravity of everything that is going on around him.