Who Dares Wins

GB

Comedy
English     5.667     2014     GB

Overview

Who Dares Wins was a British television comedy sketch show broadcast between 1983 and 1988, featuring Jimmy Mulville, Rory McGrath, Philip Pope, Julia Hills and Tony Robinson. It was one of the first TV outlets for alternative comedy and was broadcast by Channel 4 late at night in a first attempt at "Post-Pub television". It was eventually aired by the Playboy Channel in cable television outlets in the United States. The show's title is also the motto of the British Special Air Service regiment, whose badge featured in the title sequence, and was often supplemented by a subtitle, e.g., "a week in Benidorm". Mulville, McGrath and Pope had all contributed material to Not the Nine O'Clock News. Other script material was provided by Not the Nine O'Clock News regulars Colin Bostock-Smith and Andy Hamilton as well as alternative comedy writer Tony Sarchet. The series established Mulville's Hat Trick Productions as a producer of comedy material for Channel 4. The show was recorded at the former independent production facility Limehouse Studios, on a soundstage in front of a live audience.

Similar

Goodness Gracious Me is a BBC English language sketch comedy show originally aired on BBC Radio 4 from 1996 to 1998 and later televised on BBC Two from 1998 to 2001. The ensemble cast were four British Indian actors, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Kulvinder Ghir, Meera Syal and Nina Wadia. The show explored the conflict and integration between traditional Indian culture and modern British life. Some sketches reversed the roles to view the British from an Indian perspective, and others poked fun at Indian stereotypes. In the television series most of the white characters were played by Dave Lamb and Fiona Allen; in the radio series those parts were played by the cast themselves. The show's title and theme tune is a bhangra rearrangement of a hit comedy song of the same name. The original was performed by Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren reprising their characters from the 1960 film The Millionairess. The show's original working title was "Peter Sellers is Dead", but was changed because the cast generally liked Peter Sellers. In her 1996 novel Anita and Me, Syal had referred to British parodies of Asian speech as "a goodness-gracious-me accent". One of the more famous sketches featured the cast "going out for an English" after a few lassis. They mispronounce the waiter's name, order the blandest thing on the menu and ask for twenty-four plates of chips. The sketch parodies often-drunk English people "going out for an Indian", ordering chicken phall and too many papadums. This sketch was voted the 6th Greatest Comedy Sketch on a Channel 4 list show.

More info
Goodness Gracious Me
1996