The Comic Strip Presents...
- TV comedy drama
- Channel 4 / BBC Two / U&Gold
- 1982 - 2016
- 41 episodes (5 series)
Periodic series of satires and spoofs that helped bring alternative comedy to the mainstream and forge a comedy reputation for then-new Channel 4. Stars Adrian Edmondson, Rik Mayall, Nigel Planer, Peter Richardson, Jennifer Saunders and more.
Streaming rank this week: 3,105
Press clippings Page 2
Comic Strip Presents ... Red Top review
Great turns from Maxine Peake as Rebekah Brooks, Nigel Planer as Rupert Murdoch and others provide lots of lols - especially the scene set in our offices.
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian, 21st January 2016Comic Strip Presents... Red Top, review: 'lacked bite'
This satirical take on the tabloid phone hacking scandal felt like yesterday's news, says Rupert Hawksley.
Rupert Hawksley, The Telegraph, 21st January 2016News International gets a thorough skewering in this new instalment of the veteran satire series Comic Strip. The peerless Maxine Peake stars as flame-haired red top editor Rebekah Brooks, an "innocent and beguiling northern girl" who rises to the top of the tabloid publishing empire alongside Russell Tovey's Andy Coulson. As ever, it's a star-studded affair, with Stephen Mangan as a 70s Tony Blair and Harry Enfield as Ross Kemp, alongside top turns from Johnny Vegas, Nigel Planer and Alexei Sayle.
Ben Arnold, The Guardian, 20th January 2016The Comic Strip Presents... Red Top, Gold, TV review
he hacking tale remains a dreamland of outrageous dramatic material - as the saying goes, you just couldn't make it up.
James Cusick, The Independent, 20th January 2016Rik Mayall's son Sid follows in his father's footsteps
Viewers will see Sid Mayall, 27, play a corrupt police officer in the one-off show.
Daily Star, 20th January 2016How the Comic Strip took on the phone hacking scandal
Maxine Peake, Stephen Mangan and the other cast of Red Top open up on their 70s-inspired take on News International.
Vincent Graff, Radio Times, 20th January 2016Review: Comic Strip Presents... Red Top
Collusions between the top echelons of media and politics exposed by the phone-hacking scandal prove a treasure trove of inspiration for Comic Strip guru Peter Richardson.
Steve Bennett, Chortle, 20th January 2016The Red Top preview
It's 75-minutes of pure entertainment and pure escape, and if nothing else, watching Maxine Peake, Russell Tovey, Eleanor Matsuura, Johnny Vegas, Alexei Sayle, Harry Enfield, James Buckley, John Sessions, Stephen Mangan and Peter Richardson share the screen is a real joy.
Elliot Gonzalez, I Talk Telly, 19th January 2016Radio Times review
This will be the 42nd instalment of The Comic Strip Presents pageant to be aired over the best part of 35 years, and it promises to be the kind of shamelessly silly, flight-of-fancy spoof that has become something of a national institution in the other 41.
The target for their satirical boot this time is the phone-hacking scandal, but transposed to the disco-era 1970s. Rebekah Brooks (Maxine Peake) is here a naive northern girl who more or less accidentally becomes chief executive of News International and roller-skates (literally) through life unaware of the dreadful things going on around her.
One of the only survivors of the troupe that first launched Channel 4 on air in 1982 is Nigel Planer, here playing a hen-pecked Rupert Murdoch, while Stephen Mangan reprises his Tony Blair turn (as a groovy rocker) and Harry Enfield dons the bald cap to embody Brooks's sometime husband, Ross Kemp.
David Butcher, Radio Times, 12th January 2016Imagine Rebekah Brooks roller-skating through The Sun
It's a glorious, irreverent post-hacking lampoon, a fantasy set in the 1970s with flairs, moustaches and disco music, that tells the story of Rebekah, an ingenue from the north of England who, having accidentally become chief executive of News International, gets embroiled (innocently of course) in a scandal.
Roy Greenslade, The Guardian, 6th January 2016