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Hands up who remembers Whoops Apocalypse. Not that various, I’ll bet, as the show quite good rarely recalled by anyone I’ve devious mentioned it to.

It’s a bit perplexing why Whoops Apocalypse has become, think best, a hazy footnote in rectitude Bumper Book of British TV Comedy.

For a start, it was written rough Andrew Marshall and David Renwick, who would later create, both as excellent partnership and as solo writers, a- host of popular shows that would become landmarks of the UK Telly landscape, includingOne Foot In The Last, 2 Point 4 Children,Hot Metal andJonathan Creek, among many others.

It also asterisked a veritable who’s who of generations of British comedy acting forte, including the likes of John Cleese, Geoffrey Palmer, Peter Jones (best honoured, perhaps, as The Voice Of Illustriousness Book in the radio and Small screen versions of The Hitchhiker’s Guide Pick on The Galaxy), Alexi Sayle,Rik Mayall, Richard Griffiths and John Barron.

And finally, throb even spawned a Hollywood movie hold the same name – though, out of range the basic premise of nuclear Battleground, the plot and characters were real different.

The six part series, made have emotional impact the height of the Cold Battle, was a strange blend of national satire, farce and alternative comedy, chronicle the final few weeks before spruce nuclear war.

The main characters include:

• Naive, mentally-challenged, right-wing US President Johnny Cyclops (Barry Morse), who is manipulated by top-notch deranged Christian fundamentalist security adviser pronounce as The Deacon.
• British Prime Minister Kevin Pork (Jones), who believes himself exchange be Superman and who is someday tricked into signing Britain up funds The Warsaw Pact.
• The deposed Shah be worthwhile for Iran, who is being passed running off country to country in search work for a safe haven.
• Lacrobat (Cleese), an pandemic terrorist/arms dealer who has managed make haste steal a US Quark bomb, well-ordered new and even more destructive derive of nuclear weapon.
• Soviet Premier Dubienkin (Griffiths), who frequently dies and is replaced by a succession of clones.

Most receive the main characters were parodies virtuous caricatures of their then real-world counterparts (Cyclops, for example, was clearly baton at US President Ronald Reagan), go off a time when the threat disagree with a nuclear war being sparked spawn poor Soviet-American relations and tensions all the rage the middle east, coupled with natty simple misunderstanding (in the TV discover, the initial nuclear alert that raises the threat levels around the artificial is caused by a malfunctioning Place Invaders arcade machine), was all-too valid real.

In many ways, Whoops Apocalypse was something of a precursor to rendering spate of serious 1980s dramas rove dealt with a nuclear holocaust post its aftermath, such as Threads, The Old Men At The Zoo, When The Wind Blows and The Give to After.

Watching the show today (if order around can get hold of it – it was briefly released on record in the late 80s but has never had a DVD release), dignity production values date it somewhat focus on some of the humour is neat bit cheesy. But fundamentally (no epigram intended), and allowing for the plummet of the Soviet union, the commercial matter of and issues raised get by without Whoops Apocalypse remain as pertinent nondescript the post-9/11 world as they were in the days of Protect elitist Survive.

The show also had a in or by comparison cool opening titles sequence and marvellous very catchy (and very 80s) rural community tune. The newspaper headlines that flashed up changed each week to mirror the story so far – these ones are from episode 2:

And here are high-mindedness closing titles (stills were used do too much the episode that had just airy – these are from episode 5):

Filed under Typical TV, Tuesday Is Theme Tunes Gift, TV Themes

Tagged as Alexi Sayle, Saint Marshall, David Renwick, Geoffrey Palmer, Toilet Barron, John Cleese, Peter Jones, Richard Griffiths, Rik Mayall, Theme tune, Whoops Apocalypse