Following on from recent posts about Pen Monkeys, I suppose I should mention that it spawned a sequel of sorts. This was in the final days of 4Later, Channel 4's weird and experimental late night slot. It was closed down shortly afterwards and the days when a broadcaster would allow you to "make a half-hour animated comedy show for the price of a Ford Mondeo", to quote Peter Scott, were no more.
The bods at Channel 4 knew that the department was closing and that they would be moving on, so they figured "what they hell, lets name this programme Live Sex". That will be funny, they thought, to see in the listings. We were a bit taken back by this. We argued that viewers might be a little disappointed to tune into Live Sex and find a ropey cartoon about Posh & Becks. Hence the poor show got stuck with the compromise title of Sex Bar. To be honest though, the whole programme was a bit compromised and unloved. It had the single ugliest visual style of any programme that we have ever done, and sadly neither myself or anyone else thought to say, 'hang on, this looks terrible, lets do it differently.'
Still, we did one good thing in the show, which was to ask the v. lovely comedian Jackie Clunes to write and record a spoof charity single, on the subject of giant mutant celebrity babies going on the rampage. Of course, Jackie Clunes has since gone on to have an exceptional amount of children, written the book Extreme Motherhood: The Triplet Diaries, and become an inspiration to mothers everywhere. These events were perhaps not that evident in the song she came up with back in 2001, though. This is Kill Your Children:
Believe it or not a clip of that was on our company showreel for a while. The company has done much better since we took it off.
The bods at Channel 4 knew that the department was closing and that they would be moving on, so they figured "what they hell, lets name this programme Live Sex". That will be funny, they thought, to see in the listings. We were a bit taken back by this. We argued that viewers might be a little disappointed to tune into Live Sex and find a ropey cartoon about Posh & Becks. Hence the poor show got stuck with the compromise title of Sex Bar. To be honest though, the whole programme was a bit compromised and unloved. It had the single ugliest visual style of any programme that we have ever done, and sadly neither myself or anyone else thought to say, 'hang on, this looks terrible, lets do it differently.'
Still, we did one good thing in the show, which was to ask the v. lovely comedian Jackie Clunes to write and record a spoof charity single, on the subject of giant mutant celebrity babies going on the rampage. Of course, Jackie Clunes has since gone on to have an exceptional amount of children, written the book Extreme Motherhood: The Triplet Diaries, and become an inspiration to mothers everywhere. These events were perhaps not that evident in the song she came up with back in 2001, though. This is Kill Your Children:
Believe it or not a clip of that was on our company showreel for a while. The company has done much better since we took it off.
Comments
Post a Comment