Please subscribe to my channel www.youtube.com/@billbobmatthews, which is home to many rarely seen comedy gems from the early to mid 1980s, when only early adopters had VCRs - as well as my own work as a writer and producer in TV and radio since that period. There are also riches from other decades too. The best way to navigate all the videos on the channel is via the Playlists... www.youtube.com/@billbobmatthews/playlists

Forty years on and this is the first time I'm seeing this.

@lincolnyaco5626

28 күн бұрын

-no kidding! -

@thebagelsproductions

26 күн бұрын

Me too, I do remember watching Al Fresco with these guys in the early 80s - I think that it is on KZread - it was pretty good, ITV trying to do Not the 9 o'clock News type thing

I miss the '80's. I sometimes wish I could remember it.

Brilliant…and such fun to see them all when they were young again!!

I always thought it should have been," Bit of Fry, Laurie AND Thompson. What ho)?

Emma Thompson sounds like a cross between Janet Street-Porter and Esther Rantzen, mixed with Pamela Stephenson doing an impression of Jan Leeming on Not the Nine O'Clock News! And Gareth: "Good Moaning!"

@bagsbunny

28 күн бұрын

I was thinking if Faye Fife of the Rezillos!

@user-gl5lh5id1n

26 күн бұрын

Yes, I'm sure she's taking off Esther Rancid.

I have re-uploaded with improved sound quality, the last 12 minutes, which can be found here: kzread.info/dash/bejne/lmGXra6kZqu2gbA.html. The sound goes a bit awry on this towards the end.

@peterhammond1701

Ай бұрын

Thanks a lot for this, it's one hell of a find. It really is an excellent example of what normal educated people thought of Thatcherite Britain.

First scene sure seems like a parody of Peter Ustinov, Jenny Agutter, and Michael York in the movie Logan's Run.

@rojavida

25 күн бұрын

Yes, with a strong Blake’s 7 aesthetic.

@lincolnyaco5626

18 күн бұрын

@@rojavida pretty "inside baseball", nu?

@lincolnyaco5626

18 күн бұрын

@@rojavida I mean, not bad, I'm just saying, y'know? Or is that too recondite. If one can ever be TOO recondite, n' est pa? Is it not so?

@rojavida

18 күн бұрын

@@lincolnyaco5626 surprisingly, we don’t have that metaphor in the UK. Since this is a UK show and I was around at the time I actually recognised some of the uniforms from Blake’s 7. It was a popular science fiction series in the UK during the ‘80’s. I certainly wouldn’t expect America to know the reference, but for anyone in the UK it definitely isn’t that abstruse.

@lincolnyaco5626

18 күн бұрын

@@rojavida True, true...."Inside baseball" means idiosyncratic, esoteric...I am familiar with Blake's 7 but for most Americans it would not be familiar--as you pointed out. The term "Inside Baseball" is itself esoteric to many Americans and most Brits. Using it is an inside joke--probably most familiar to Rick and Morty fans,

Never saw this in Australia... excellent!!!

Hugh Laurie playing an American doctor? Absurdism at its finest.

No, the sound is funky.😮

Having just watched this for the first time, I can't but help thinking of Look Around You. Very similar humour and the music at the end sounds extremely similar to the intro and exit parts on that show. Maybe this was too ahead of its time for the BBC in 1983.

1:30 old fashioned 'Wimbledon" knickers!

i miss clever comedy that requires an attention span longer than 18 seconds.

@swolltits3927

Ай бұрын

TL;DR

@KenLieck

Ай бұрын

Well, that's mainly because he misunderstood the question...

@saxoncrow2500

Ай бұрын

Sorry I lost interest at 17 seconds

@lincolnyaco5626

28 күн бұрын

They sustained it for 30 minutes! Long form comic pieces are so rare.

Emma is remarkably funny! I didn't know that she was a comic wunderkind even in her early years!

@liquidsonly

18 күн бұрын

You need to stay in more.

@lincolnyaco5626

18 күн бұрын

@@liquidsonly -?-

@ros8986

5 күн бұрын

Emma Thompson started out in comedy in the Cambridge Footlights with Laurie and Fry. Her monologues in Al Fresco series are brilliant.

It is a wonderful parody reminiscent of Blakes 7, and innumerable other Sci-Fi TV programmes, and dealing with world shattering concepts as did a lot of Fry & Laurie's comedy.

@ThisGuy76

Ай бұрын

Logan's Run.

How wonderful, thanks!

Obviously they have acting chops already here, some nice character work all around.

I can see why other commenters like this, but personally I'm glad this pilot wasn't picked up for a series and we got Fry & Laurie's sketch show instead. That was much better! Obviously, pilots are hardly ever as good as their resultant series, but in 1983 we were all watching The Young Ones. This would never have been able to compete with that.

Nice to see an early appearance of Arthur Bostrom (before ‘Allo ‘Allo).

Thanks for putting this on the KZread, i think the phasey sound is from one side of the stereo sound arriving later so parts of the left channel sound waves are cancelling or reinforcing the right channel sound waves. If you can just record one side it should be fine. I recognise the sound from trippy electric guitar effect pedals. I see you have put a link into video with sound sorted out but id already started this msg so im leaving it to feed the algyrythims 😅

These two have been great right from the start. Reminds me of watching old monty python sketches😁

Imperialist College...nice touch.

I think the Alpha, Beta, Gamma categorising if people is from Brave New World book

🥰

I say its Fred Elliott

Oh, Wow.

I'd argue this does a better job of dissecting fascism and eugenics than Huxley did.

Is it just me or is the sound all phasey and weird?

@christopherpalmer7879

Ай бұрын

I think it's VHS.

@filipponseele7346

16 күн бұрын

I think it,s part of the joke, to make it to apear older​@@christopherpalmer7879

@societywolf

14 күн бұрын

Very phasey and weird and as a child of the 90s I can say that is not how VHS sounds (unless perhaps it’s from England where they would reuse tape until it disintegrated)

@LoriKasprzak-kc7xc

8 күн бұрын

This is as cheesy as "Flash Gordon" was back in my day. 😅😂😂

What happened to the sound at the end? Was that part of the show or just a recording?

@peztopher7297

Ай бұрын

It was like that the whole time they were in the studio. It just got worse as it went along, some kind of reverb feedback.

He must be really tall, because she's tall too!

I really thought Fallout would be better.

@ThisGuy76

Ай бұрын

Never played the game... show was fine.

@indigodoctor77

Ай бұрын

@@ThisGuy76ok. I made my comment after watching the first minute of this… It’s a subtle joke.

Uh… this started like the first episode of Fallout. lol

🤣

Shame about the audio quality

@billbobmatthews

Ай бұрын

Hi Vynce, I am looking into this. Can you please give me an example of where the audio quality is especially bad (please don't say 'all of it'), and what kind of device you watched it on (i.e. iPad, laptop, smartphone etc)? Thanks. I expect it's the confrontation at the end where they are all talking at once. The audio for the rest of the episode seems fine to me. I have tried it on an iPhone and Fire tablet.

@VynceMontgomery

Ай бұрын

@@billbobmatthews I mean it is almost all of it; though the intensity seems to come and go. There's like a quarter second delay echo or something. But for example, at 1:40 you can hear that all the percussive noises are "sproingy" and at 27:46 it's almost impossible to hear what's going on. I'm on a mac laptop. Builtin speakers and headphones both have the same problem.

How fit is Emma Thompson here!?

i wondered how Fry and Thompson knew each other so well that they could share all these stories on QI. Or why a oscar winning movie star would come on it in the first place.

@BrundleFly868

Ай бұрын

Fry, Laurie and Thompson were at Cambridge University together and became friends performing in the 'Footlights' student revues.

@neiljerram33

23 күн бұрын

Then I strongly recommend Peter's Friends!

@ros8986

5 күн бұрын

@@BrundleFly868 Thompson actually introduced Fry and Laurie to each other.

👎Terrible sound ❗

@billbobmatthews

Ай бұрын

See comment below yours!

@4623620

Ай бұрын

@@billbobmatthews That's no excuse, I have video tapes that are older and better.

@billbobmatthews

Ай бұрын

@@4623620 Excuse me? I am new to this and I made a mistake in my setup of the audio in OBS in transferring from the source to my computer, which I diagnosed and have now corrected. I have tried to make up for this initial error by re-uploading the section where the sound is a particular problem. Apparently though, that's not good enough for you.

@4623620

Ай бұрын

@@billbobmatthews Okay, being a beginner is a bit of an excuse, but apparently the sound isn't completely fixed yet. Throughout the video the audio still has an unpleasant reverb, making it very difficult to understand what's being said.

@billbobmatthews

Ай бұрын

@@4623620 I can't fix the sound on this video, which is why I have directed people to an upload of the second half, given that the sound on this is at its worst towards the end. As this has proved to be my most popular upload in terms of both views and likes, I am unwilling to replace it entirely. If you know of a way of fixing the sound without losing the views and likes, I'd love to find out how to do it.

Is that officer Crabtree?