Alongside feature length documentary Bottom: Exposed, two extended episodes of Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson’s sitcom will debut on GOLD this month.
As far as double acts go, to a certain generation Adrian Edmondson and Rik Mayall are at the apex of anarchic comedy.
Beginning their career at the start of the alternative comedy movement, performing alongside the likes of Hale and Pace, Ben Elton and Andy De La Tour, their violent Twentieth Century Coyote stage act went quickly from The Comedy Store to The Comic Strip, which itself made the leap to television with their now iconic first film Five Go Mad In Dorset. It was quite the transformative time for television comedy, as it was broadcast on Channel 4 exactly a week before the first episode of The Young Ones debuted on rival channel BBC Two.
In 1991, meanwhile, Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson debuted their masterpiece, Bottom.
Bottom followed the misadventures of Richard Richard and Eddie Hitler, both of whom believe they are better than the other, when of course the truth is that neither actually is. While the gag count was incredibly high, the tight scripts are just one of the reasons why each episode is eminently rewatchable. It is the violence for which Bottom is most fondly remembered.
Originally made as part of the comedy’s second series, which aired in the autumn of 1992, longer versions of episodes Digger and Holy will premiere on Gold on Friday 19th April in a double bill from 9pm.
The longer version of Holy, running to 34 minutes and 41 seconds, is included on the previous Series 2 DVD release, whilst the cut scenes from Digger and another episode, Gas, were originally released on the 1996 out-takes compilation VHS, Bottom: Fluff and have never been released in a reconstituted whole-episode form.
Bottom: Exposed, a new feature length documentary looking back at the series, featuring interviews with Edmondson and many of the cast and crew, will air on GOLD on the 18th April at 9pm.
