Wheels Within Wheels

I've always had a thing about comedy shows that interject a totally different show within them, like a mirror facing a mirror. Or something. Out there, there's probably a TV show about a TV show that has a TV show within it. It makes you go down the whole Truman show route and wonder if me being sat here typing is part of some messed up reality show. And if it is, and you're watching it, how sad are you?

For now, five of my favourites of this ilk.

Drunk in Time
Appearing in one of Alexi Sayle's sketch shows in the early 90s, this meant nothing unless you were familiar with dodgy 60s sci-fi show The Time Tunnel, which I think was being repeated on Channel 4 at the time. The credit sequence is brilliantly parodied, with the sands of time in the original being replaced in a more unique manner.

Sayle and Peter Capaldi (with less swearing) play a couple of drunken scousers who fall into the vortex of time, causing disaster wherever they go. The always lovely Jenny Agutter plays the scientist trying to get them back. A top scene sees them crash in on the assassination of Rasputin, who they mistake for Alan Bleasdale – when the Russian generals shoot him and exclaim “bullets have no effect on him!”, Capaldi notes “he’s used to criticism”.

Nosin’ Around
Obnoxious student Rick in the Young Ones is excited that the BBC have finally woken up and made some minority programming, produced by amateurs and of interest to a small handful of people. Despite the imminent demolition of the flat, he plonks himself in front of the TV, demands silence and awaits the momentous show.

Instead, what we get is Ben Elton dancing badly and exclaiming that this was a show “For young adults, made by young adults” and concerning the issues that young adults face. Apparently, this is mainly that while at 16 you are old enough to join the armed forces, marry and have children or “have intercourse with the partner of your choice” but yet cannot drink in pubs.

Rick is left to kick in the TV in disgust, screaming “The voice of youth?! They’re still wearing flared trousers!”

Invitation to Love
As with just about anything involving David Lynch (except, obviously, The Straight Story), Twin Peaks was completely off its head: a successor to the madness Patrick McGoohan brought us with The Prisoner.

In several scenes, characters would be watching a spoof of the kind of dire American soap that we used to get on Channel 5 in the daytime. Maybe still do – I couldn't say, having not been unemployed for several years. You know the sort: acting more akin to a first year infant school nativity, background sets apparently made from recycled Corn Flakes boxes.

However, Invitation to Love also played a role in predicting future events in Twin Peaks. A shooting, or when a character appears who looks exactly like a previously departed one. It put me off watching Coronation Street, lest I see my own life occurring a few days in advance, and I have enough bleakness going as it is.

History Today
A regular highlight of both the Mary Whitehouse Experience and Newman and Baddiel in Pieces, in which two stoical history professors begin on some dry topic before quickly descending into schoolyard insult throwing. Naturally, the term “that’s you, that is” soon became heard all across the nation as a put down: “see that Joey Deacon? That’s you, that is”.

There were also some other top lines, such as “see a pair of 3D glasses you might get free on the cover of TV Quick? That’s your new Ray Bans”. It was often suggested that the intense animosity between the two characters reflected the feelings between the two comedians. If so, it was no surprise that they stopped working together soon afterwards.

The Bureau
In the world of The Day Today, The Bureau is the BBC’s latest hit drama, in which Steve Coogan's Hennerty ruthlessly tries to maintain “a high class Bureau de Change” in the face of colleagues squabbling, being the victim of homophobic hate crime and committing suicide. The latter is so shocking, that Hennerty drops the bombshell that “I’m closing the Bureau. For 20 minutes.”

Though the show was a big hit in Italy, falling ratings back home ensued the cast were forced to tour the country, performing episodes on the back of a flat-bed truck. Is it only me that wishes Coogan had revisited Hennerty elsewhere in his career?