Quote: honora @ October 9 2010, 6:32 PM GMT
Why didn't it have another series? Was it lack of viewers or was Sean Lock not up for another series?
Sean talked about wanting a third series but it was turned down. I'm pretty sure they had written material for it too. I spoke to Stuart Murphy, then controller of the channel, asking him why and he said it just wasn't getting the ratings. I said that he should have tried advertising it better and he said that some shows get trailers on TV but for others they had different approaches and they'd decided to promote 15 Storeys High via the web. What a totally bizarre thing to say. Anyway, it was buried and I miss it deeply.
It had many fans in the comedy world, most notably, Matt Groening, Paul Whitehouse and Armando Iannucci, who wrote;
Life is full of mysteries, such as "where do they put the emergency exits in the Channel Tunnel?". But for me, one of the greatest is why isn't 15 Storeys High recognised as the comic classic it is? The second series, which starts on BBC Two this week, has been dumped, like an insane relative of the Royal Family, out of sight where no one is likely to notice (late on Sunday nights).
In case you know nothing about 15 Storeys High, it's a quietly absurd sitcom starring Sean Lock as Vince, a grumpy swimming pool attendant who lives in a tower block with a second-generation Chinese northerner called Errol, played by Benedict Wong.
It's filmed in a blanched-out sequence of static, grainy shots that trap you into thinking you're about to get some grim kitchen-sink piece of social commentary. In fact, what you get is a joyously escalating series of warm and hilarious plots prompted by the inconsequential. My favourite memory from the first series is of Errol peeling off a bit of loose wallpaper in the bathroom, only to end up stripping the room bare and backing out of the flat with all the wallpaper down his trousers, his bum now enormous and crinkling, trying to pretend to Vince that nothing had happened.
Even little moments of dialogue burst out of control, such as Vince persuading Errol not to buy goldfish: "You get one goldfish and it's lonely. You get two and they don't get on. You get a third and it's two on one. You get a fourth and it's a borstal."
15 Storeys High is difficult to describe, because it is unlike any other sitcom. The last comedy I can remember that arrived with such a perfect, idiosyncratic and fully formed comic world of its own was Father Ted. It's that good. I want you to watch it so much it hurts.
15 Storeys High, Sunday, BBC Two, 10.40pm/11.10pm (regions vary)
Source; The Times - 15 / 05 / 04