How Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson’s big screen spin off from their popular TV sitcom unfairly hit rock bottom with critics…
During the 1970s, almost every major British sitcom transitioned to the big screen, with varying degrees of quality. Yet come the post-modern 1990s, this trend was much less in evidence. Especially with alternative sitcoms such as Bottom, which aired between 1991 and 1995 on BBC2 and swiftly cemented itself as a ratings hit and cult favourite.
Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson, both writers and stars of all 18 episodes across three series of Bottom, had a friendship born in the 1970s studying at the University of Manchester and honed via the alternative comedy surrealism of The Comic Strip Presents… and Ben Elton and Lise Mayer’s The Young Ones in the early 1980s. The latter, memorably, took fourth wall breaking anarchy to a whole new level.