Paul Jackson (I)

How The Young Ones changed comedy for ever

With flying eclairs, falling beds and exploding buses, the anarchic antics of Rick, Vyvyan, Neil and Mike shoved alternative comedy into the mainstream. Forty years on, we ask the show's creators how they pulled it off.

TV: How The Young Ones Changed Comedy, Gold

Is it really nearly 40 years since The Young Ones exploded onto BBC2 and gave British comedy a great big kick up the arse? I thought I knew a fair bit about the series, but this in-depth documentary sheds new light alongside retreading familiar ground.

Fifty years on from their first appearance, Albert and 'Arold still form the perfect sitcom duo: bitter, failed and trapped. Paul Jackson looks at the Steptoes' vast comedic influence, in conversation with their creators Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, as well as present-day writers of both comedy and drama.

Paul Jackson, great practical grammarian of British television, on how Alan Simpson and Ray Galton's comedy characters, born on a BBC pilot programme in 1962, ruled the airwaves for 13 years after (with native versions in America, Sweden and Holland) and have influenced other British writers over several generations. Simpson and Galton join him, as do Maurice Gran and Laurence Marks of Birds of a Feather, Rob Grant and Doug Naylor of Red Dwarf, as well as Peter Flannery of Our Friends in the North.

The legendary lost Men Behaving Badly pilot

Whilst working on this week's Britain In A Box, I had a rare treat when we managed to obtain a copy of the original, never-broadcast pilot of Men Behaving Badly. The pilot was made for Thames TV, directed by their then Head of Comedy, John Howard Davies and starred the eventual cast of the first series, Harry Enfield, Martin Clunes, Caroline Quentin and Lesley Ash.