career?” You just sort of busked it. If it worked then everybody took the credit, and if it didn’t work then nobody took the blame.’ He adds, however, ‘I thinkit stopped at the right time. I think if you’re going to carry on with that idea, you have to do something a little different. Either you have to bring new people in, or lose some people, or take it in a different direction …’ His own new direction was sitcom, although taking on the might of a popular and artistic triumph like Fawlty Towers , even four years after its final episode, was a task which neither he nor Curtis savoured. ‘For some reason we started to think about the possibility of writing a sitcom together, for me to perform or be a major character in. And I remember we both felt the sort of scourge of Fawlty Towers , which was, and remains, fantastically funny. And it was sort of hanging over us as something to which we were bound to be unfavourably compared. We were fairly convinced that whatever we did, set in the modern day, was going to be described as a pale imitation.’
Curtis was beginning to shape a contemporary crime series, pitched unpromisingly as ‘ Fawlty Towers meets Starsky & Hutch ’, centring on Atkinson as a lawyer’s clerk who turns detective after a spate of bicycle thefts in Camden Town. Not had already sent up the state of situation comedy back in its second series, presenting the BAFTA Award for Best Sofa in a cosy suburban sitcom, so something a little grittier than That’s My Boy was required. As Atkinson explained to the Sun in 1989, ‘We wanted to go the opposite way from the usual sitcoms and thought a bit of crime would give the comedy an edge.’ But after a series of wrestling matches with a rudimentary script, they had to agree that it wasn’t going to work. There was just something tawdry about such a low-key premise, and they thought that the more epic their idea was, the better chance it had of being a hit. Then, as Atkinson was to recall, ‘Errol Flynn came to the rescue …’
A daytime showing of the 1938 film The Adventures of Robin Hood lit a spark for the duo: if it was murder and skulduggery they wanted, after years of topical sketches, what could be a cleaner break than a medieval tights-and-codpiece spoof? ‘I remember the Robin Hood movie was a touchstone for us,’ Atkinson revealed twenty years later.‘We thought it was definitive in terms of its way of presenting – albeit in a slightly Hollywoodesque way – the excitement of that time, of the fifteenth century.’ Not that the powers that be offered them any encouragement. ‘We were very strongly advised that the two things that absolutely never, ever worked – and everybody tried – was sitcoms set in heaven, and historical sitcoms,’ Curtis remembers, ‘but, um, we ignored the advice. The reason we did the historical one was twofold. We did it because I just couldn’t imagine putting Rowan in a jacket and being anything but embarrassed by how much less funny he was than Basil Fawlty; and second, we liked the idea of big plots! Death and carnage and kings and princes and chaos, rather than just writing about your car breaking down.’ The duo had form with mocking historical drama – a regular part of their live shows was Curtis’s Shakespearean lecture, with all the laughs coming from Rowan’s mimed illustration of every point, while Richard droned, ‘At the centre of the Elizabethan world, sits the King. Upon the character of the King depends the plot, and so there are many different kinds of King. The benign King … The benign King with a physical defect … The benign King with two physical defects …’ and so on.
Everything Rowan turned his talent to tended to emerge as a unique animal, no matter how many footsteps he was treading in, but he and Curtis must have been well aware of the rich tradition of which they were planning to become a part. What made historical comedy so verboten to comedy commissioners in
Curtis was beginning to shape a contemporary crime series, pitched unpromisingly as ‘ Fawlty Towers meets Starsky & Hutch ’, centring on Atkinson as a lawyer’s clerk who turns detective after a spate of bicycle thefts in Camden Town. Not had already sent up the state of situation comedy back in its second series, presenting the BAFTA Award for Best Sofa in a cosy suburban sitcom, so something a little grittier than That’s My Boy was required. As Atkinson explained to the Sun in 1989, ‘We wanted to go the opposite way from the usual sitcoms and thought a bit of crime would give the comedy an edge.’ But after a series of wrestling matches with a rudimentary script, they had to agree that it wasn’t going to work. There was just something tawdry about such a low-key premise, and they thought that the more epic their idea was, the better chance it had of being a hit. Then, as Atkinson was to recall, ‘Errol Flynn came to the rescue …’
A daytime showing of the 1938 film The Adventures of Robin Hood lit a spark for the duo: if it was murder and skulduggery they wanted, after years of topical sketches, what could be a cleaner break than a medieval tights-and-codpiece spoof? ‘I remember the Robin Hood movie was a touchstone for us,’ Atkinson revealed twenty years later.‘We thought it was definitive in terms of its way of presenting – albeit in a slightly Hollywoodesque way – the excitement of that time, of the fifteenth century.’ Not that the powers that be offered them any encouragement. ‘We were very strongly advised that the two things that absolutely never, ever worked – and everybody tried – was sitcoms set in heaven, and historical sitcoms,’ Curtis remembers, ‘but, um, we ignored the advice. The reason we did the historical one was twofold. We did it because I just couldn’t imagine putting Rowan in a jacket and being anything but embarrassed by how much less funny he was than Basil Fawlty; and second, we liked the idea of big plots! Death and carnage and kings and princes and chaos, rather than just writing about your car breaking down.’ The duo had form with mocking historical drama – a regular part of their live shows was Curtis’s Shakespearean lecture, with all the laughs coming from Rowan’s mimed illustration of every point, while Richard droned, ‘At the centre of the Elizabethan world, sits the King. Upon the character of the King depends the plot, and so there are many different kinds of King. The benign King … The benign King with a physical defect … The benign King with two physical defects …’ and so on.
Everything Rowan turned his talent to tended to emerge as a unique animal, no matter how many footsteps he was treading in, but he and Curtis must have been well aware of the rich tradition of which they were planning to become a part. What made historical comedy so verboten to comedy commissioners in
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