Ben Elton

There really was a 5th housemate in The Young Ones

There really was a creepy fifth housemate lurking in cult British TV show The Young Ones.

Upstart Crow: Bard saved Elton from sitcom oblivion

Alack the day! Upstart Crow (BBC Two) has shuffled off its chortle coil. There was something for everyone in Ben Elton's learned Bardcom.

In the last in the series of Ben Elton's bard-based sitcom, the age of exploration promises great riches for London residents brave enough to fling savings at the futures market. Sadly for Shakey, though, family finances are floundering, so if a modest investment of his own is to blossom, the offer of a loan from rival Robert Greene will need to be taken. However, Greene's interest rates turn out to be even more injurious than anything the likes of Wonga could impose.

Review: Upstart Crow, episode 5

I couldn't see a co-writing credit alongside Ben Elton's name for William Shakespeare, but as anyone with a basic grasp of English literature will spot this week's episode is a comical rewrite of Macbeth. And a pretty nifty one, with David Mitchell as the bard convinced that he has committed murder at the behest of his scheming wife so that they can move to the big house in Stratford before prices rise out of reach.

Preview: Upstart Crow, episode 4, Love is Not Love

I'm not enough of a Shakespeare scholar to vouch for the accuracy of Ben Elton's historical sitcom, but as a comedy geek I can at least confirm that it is funnier than his last effort, The Wright Way.

Review: Upstart Crow, BBC2, episode 3

There was a bit of chat on Twitter recently about how Upstart Crow is a refreshing real sitcom, contrasting it with the trend for non-sidesplitting studio comedies, which I guess means things like Going Forward and Mum. I think there is room for both. I like the more subtle comedies and while there is nothing subtle about Ben Elton's Shakespearen send-up I can certainly see the attraction of Upstart Crow if you just want stupid, painless laughs and smutty innuendo.

There was much fanfare recently about a comedian bringing a new sitcom to TV. Unfortunately, it was all aimed at Ben Elton with his awful Shakespeare comedy, Upstart Crow. Had there been any justice in the world the attention would have been on Jo Brand and her new sitcom, Going Forward.

It's a loose follow-up to Getting On, her comedy set in a geriatric ward. Kim Wilde (Brand) has now left her work in the NHS and is working for a private health-care provider called, with poisonously quiet humour, Buccaneer. Kim is calm, good and patient - and utterly exhausted by her job, where she has to zoom from house to house, trying to "care" for her elderly patients within a miserably short time-slot before dashing off to the next. She has to meet her targets with Buccaneer, but the human needs of her patients mean she simply cannot. Private health care, with its targets and timesheets, is not compatible with compassion.

The opening scenes are almost drained of colour as the morning sun bleaches Kim's kitchen, and it's not a pleasant, warming sunrise, but a blazing, intrusive reminder that the day has begun and all must rush, rush, rush off to work. Capitalism is breathing down your neck and demanding your subservience. And it also demands that you abandon the elderly man who hasn't been fed or ignore the appalling loneliness of the old woman whose son never rings her.

It's a slow, sly, clever sitcom, filled with despair and meandering dialogue, and yet all the attention has been on Ben Elton's watery rehash of Blackadder. If you told Kim this she'd just give a weary sigh and get on with things. She doesn't have the time to worry about self-important men in tights.

On the eve of its presentation to Queen Elizabeth I, William Shakespeare's controversial new play about the Mary Stuart - Mary The Frog-Jock - goes mysteriously missing. And Will's best friend Kit Marlowe (Tim Downie) is in the frame, in ye second parte of Ben Elton's Tudor comedy. Perhaps make that "tragi-comedy": this is no Blackadder II, and the usually assured David Mitchell as Shakespeare certainly seems a trifle uncomfortable barking out lines such as "I am not going bald, I have low eyebrows."

Upstart Crow: joke's already wearing thin in episode 2

Last week's episode of Upstart Crow (BBC Two), Ben Elton's new ye olde sitcom starring David Mitchell as William Shakespeare, would have worked as a one-off stand-alone special for Comic Relief or similar. The thought of a whole series of the thing is a bit tiring.