The Comic Strip, Part 42 - Once in every lifetime comes a love like this.

"Four Men in a Plane" - January 4, 2000

The lead-in for The Comic Strip Presents in America was always The Young Ones. I suppose that it is inevitable refer to one when talking about the other, but for Americans of a certain vintage, they are like bookends. (The Young Ones is still on BBCAmerica, while apart from the brief video release of the two Bad News episodes, The Comic Strip has disappeared.)

Watching the two back to back could be a surreal experience - depending on how many people were hanging out, and how much attention was being paid, there could be quite intense arguments as to which actor was which ("that can't possibly be the guy who plays Vyvyan"). The biggest arguments came when someone was positive that one of the actors in a Comic Strip episode was played by Christopher Ryan. None ever was, but most of the time the character that was causing the confusion was played by Peter Richardson. I find from the Wikipedia article on The Young Ones that Richardson was originally cast as Mike.

This sort of makes sense. Christopher Ryan frequently seemed like he was completely lost in the part. I wonder what Richardson could have done with the part, and what effect it would have had on the show. I think it would have been more of a unit, rather than a group of three and detached "Mike, the cool one."

Something like, well, this:


These are nominally the same characters as the ones from "Four Men in a Car," but look at them. All the way through this we've seen that the four of them can play just about any type. Just look at how close they are to what you might imagine Vyvyan, Rick, Neil and Mike might be like twenty-ish years out from college.

Of course, this episode looks nothing like The Young Ones. It is stark, brutal, widescreen film. No dancing vegetables or interjections from the ska band du jour, just the four of them squabbling and backstabbing as always. But now the mayhem has consequences, and the slapstick leaves wounds. Something everyone learns as they grow older.