In this instalment of the ‘TV Pilot Graveyard’, we’re celebrating the unbreakable, often dysfunctional, bond of friendship – or at least, the sitcom pilots that tried to.
The ‘best mates’ sitcom is a cornerstone of comedy, built on shared experiences, mutual exasperation, and that one friend who always gets you into trouble. But for every ‘Friends’ or ‘Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps’, there are countless duos, trios, and quartets who never got past their first episode. Join me as we explore the friendships that fizzled out before they even began – and ponder why these comedic friendships hit the cutting room floor.
The ‘TV Pilot Graveyard’ is the series where we unearth the pilot episodes that never quite made it to our screens. In this video we’re diving into the chaotic world of the flat share sitcom. From mismatched personalities crammed into questionable living arrangements to the endless saga of who’s doing the dishes.
This subgenre has been a fertile ground for comedy – and, as you’ll see, a surprisingly large number of rejected ideas. Get ready to meet the aspiring actors, the struggling artists, and the perpetually unemployed who almost became your favourite roommates, but instead, ended up in the TV Pilot Graveyard.
We all love a good British sitcom, don’t we? But for every hit show, there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of ideas that never make it past a single episode. The pilot.
There are some well-documented failed pilots, shows based on intriguing ideas but, for various reasons, they didn’t get commissioned. But what about the really forgotten ones? The phantom pilots of British television. The ones from decades past, some before the Internet chronicled every single detail. We know the titles, who wrote them, maybe who was in the cast … but the stories? They’re lost to the mists of time.
In this video, we’re going on an archaeological dig into the forgotten sitcom pilots of the 1970s and 1980s, to try and discover what they could have been.
They were the ‘Home Guard’ that captured the heart of a nation. At its peak, ‘Dad’s Army’ had ratings of 18 million, with nine seasons from 1968 to 1977, plus a radio version, a stage show, and two films.
Today, we’re looking past the ‘stupid boy’ and the ‘doomed’ catchphrases to uncover what really happened to the heroes of ‘Dad’s Army’.
In the fourth and final part of my mini-series about the unbroadcast tv sitcom pilot pilot ‘The Jewel in the Crown, Southall, Middx’, we ask why did the BBC bury this pilot?
In the third part of my mini-series looking at the unbroadcast tv sitcom pilot ‘The Jewel in the Crown, Southall, Middx’, we look at how it failed and see how this pilot could never have worked in 1985.
In the second part of my mini-series about the BBC sitcom pilot ‘The Jewel in the Crown, Southall, Middx’, we look at how this new pilot introduced Spike and Eric, the bogus restaurant premise, and showed how the audience reacted to seeing a relic of an outdated comedy style.
The BBC didn’t want you to see it. However, I have seen a copy of a studio tape so let’s see what actually happens.
In 1985, the BBC united three giants of British comedy: Eric Sykes, Spike Milligan, and writer Johnny Speight. It should have been a goldmine. Instead, they produced ‘The Jewel in the Crown, Southall, Middx’ a pilot deemed so “horribly misjudged” that it was locked in the archives and never broadcast.
For decades, this pilot has been a legend amongst comedy historians. A rumour. A lost artefact of a bygone era.
Until now.
In this exclusive four-part series, we are cracking open the vault. Based on rare access to the 35-minute studio recording, we are performing a complete autopsy on the disaster that couldn’t kill a legacy.
We dive deep into why the BBC shelved it, analysing everything from the chaotic, structurally flawed script and unresolved plotlines to the elephant in the room: Spike Milligan returning to controversial “brownface” caricature in the mid-1980s.
THE SERIES BREAKDOWN:
Part 1: The Unbroadcast Exclusive – The history of the pilot and why it was commissioned.
Part 2: The Speight Factor & The Politics – Satire vs. Stereotype in Thatcher’s Britain.
Part 3: The Offence – Analysing the “low-hanging fruit” of racial humour and why it failed.
Part 4: The Final Verdict – A breakdown of the structural chaos and the legacy of the “lost” episode.
The Jewel in the Crown, Southall, Middx.’ The disaster that couldn’t kill a legacy.
Don’t miss an episode of this deep dive into British TV history’s most fascinating failure.
The book to accompany this series ‘Shelved: The Sitcom The BBC Buried‘ is available from Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0GR9B82PT and other online book stores.
These two shows represent opposite ends of the sitcom spectrum. While ‘2point4 Children’ was written almost singlehandedly by Andrew Marshall, pushing the boundaries of reality, ‘My Family’ imported the high-efficiency American “writers’ room” model that forever changed – and divided – British television.
In this video we compare these two British family sitcoms. Both BBC hits, they differ in tone and style – one embraces suburban absurdity, the other a quick-paced format. Their distinct approaches divide fans and highlight unique trends in British comedy.
‘Chef!’ was a distinctive BBC sitcom that starred Lenny Henry. He wanted to star in a sitcom that would be different from the character-driven sketch comedy he had previously been in.
He came up with the idea that was developed with Peter Tilbury to become the first episode. Although Henry wanted to play a character that was a “monster” – the arrogant, tyrannical, yet brilliant chef Gareth Blackstock – he initially had concerns about playing such an abrasive character, so they tried to make Gareth Blackstock a character you could root for despite his flaws.
