Rutland Weekend Television

Rutland Weekend Television (RWT) was a television sketch show on BBC2, written by Eric Idle with music by Neil Innes. Two series were broadcast, the first consisting of six episodes in 1975, and the second series of seven episodes in 1976. A Christmas special was broadcast on Boxing Day 1975.

It was Idle's first television project after Monty Python's Flying Circus, which ended the previous year. The show was the catalyst for The Rutles. Rutland Weekend Television or RWT centred on "Britain's smallest television network", situated in England's smallest (and mainly rural) county, Rutland.

The show's title alludes to London Weekend Television (then part of ITV and since renamed ITV London). A Rutland TV station would be pretty small (representing roughly 30,000 people in an area less than 150 square miles), so a Rutland Weekend Television would have to be ridiculously tiny. The joke was doubly meaningful as Idle had accidentally been granted a presentation budget[1] instead of the more lavish budgets associated with light entertainment – so the weekly patter about their inability to buy props and sets reflected reality. Indeed, the last show of the first series featured Idle and Innes, stripped and shivering in blankets under a bare bulb, singing about how the power's about to be shut off. Idle speaks bitterly about these conditions now but his attempts to overcome them formed the basis of a lot of the show's jokes.

Idle, in a 1975 Radio Times interview, remarked, "It was made on a shoestring budget, and someone else was wearing the shoe. The studio is the same size as the weather forecast studio and nearly as good. We had to bring the sets up four floors for each scene, then take them down again. While the next set was coming up, we'd change our make-up. Every minute mattered. It's not always funny to be funny from ten in the morning until ten at night. As for ad-libbing, what ad-libbing? You don't ad-lib when you're working with three cameras and anyway the material goes out months after you've made it."[2]

A typical episode

The episode begins with the announcer, usually with something going wrong or with something out of the ordinary, from announcements catching fire to open auditions for the announcer itself. Occasionally the announcement would be sung, or performed by more than one person. In one episode, the announcements are performed by "The Ricochet Brothers" (spelled Ricochet, but pronounced Rick-ot-chet) who begin the episode as a pair, and expand to a full cast, each speaking the announcement in harmony.

The role of the announcer would be to announce the "programmes" (typically sketches) – many programmes would lead into, or announce one of many songs and accompanying strange vignettes by Neil Innes.

Cast and guest stars

Regular cast

Ham sandwich, bucket and water plastic Duralex rubber McFisheries underwear. Plugged rabbit emulsion, zinc custard without sustenance in kipling-duff geriatric scenery, maximises press insulating government grunting sapphire-clubs incidentally. But tonight, sam pan Bombay Bermuda in diphtheria rustic McAlpine splendour, rabbit and foot-foot-phooey jugs rapidly big biro ruveliners musk-green gauges micturate with nipples and tiptoe rusting machinery, rustically inclined. Good evening and welcome.

Guest stars

Idle said of his RWT colleagues (in the same Radio Times interview): "Neil Innes is superb. I must be his biggest fan. Henry Woolf played Toulouse-Lautrec in the West End. He's the best small philosopher in London at the moment. And David Battley – what can I say? Straight, pale, dead-pan brilliant. Our cameraman, Peter Bartlett, filmed the Queen but says I'm easier to work with."[2]

Memorable sketches

The Rutles

One show introduced The Rutles, a four-piece band fronted by Innes as a man "suffering from love song" spoofing The Beatles, singing "I Must Be In Love", a pastiche of some of the early Lennon-McCartney songs. This was followed by the beginnings of a documentary feature about the band, cut short when the camera, mounted on a car, speeds off. This scene was later remade in the spinoff film, All You Need Is Cash, featuring Idle, Innes, Ricky Fataar and John Halsey (who also appeared in many of the musical items in the series) as the "Pre-Fab Four". Innes wrote the music for the film, most of which was parody of well-known Beatles songs.

On RWTV, "The Rutles" are portrayed by: Eric Idle as the Harrison character, Neil Innes as the Lennon character, David Battley as the McCartney character, and John Halsey as the Ringo character. They are introduced as: "Dirk" (Idle), "Nasty" (Innes), "Stig" (Battley), & "Barry" (Halsey). ("Barry" is inexplicably changed to "Kevin" on the RWTV soundtrack album.) The original version of "I Must Be In Love", is performed by Neil Innes & Fatso, and is slightly different than the 1978 All You Need Is Cash version. Also of note, on RWTV, "The Rutles" are quite clearly a product of Rutland, whereas in All You Need Is Cash, they are relocated to Liverpool.

Innes would later appear in another sketch, as "Ron Lennon", performing a short song titled, "The Children of Rock-N-Roll". This 30 second piece would later be expanded into a full Rutles song, "Good Times Roll", for the All You Need Is Cash film and album.

Python influence

Aside from the first appearance of the Rutles, the show features some surreal humour in the style associated with Monty Python. One sketch features the Lone Ranger (Idle) transformed into the Lone Accountant, with Innes as Tonto accidentally murdering holdup victims while trying to rescue them ("too many gin-and-tonic at lunch... You think it easy to be Indian and accountant?"). Another scene features Gwen Taylor visiting the doctor to complain of her constantly changing costume and surroundings and being diagnosed with "bad continuity." The prescribed treatment is editing out two weeks of her life, after which she says she feels well, and a bit hungry... though her soundtrack is still off. She then becomes a victim of recurring film flashbacks, eventually disappearing back into her childhood.

Innes subsequently created and starred in The Innes Book of Records, a pre-MTV show that wove together strange guests and music videos in a bewildering array of musical styles and visual styles.

Other media

As well as providing the basis for The Rutles, Rutland Weekend Television also spawned its own LP and book.

Album

Book

The Rutland Dirty Weekend Book by Eric Idle, 1976

A dense and lavishly illustrated parody of the Television, films and print media of the mid-1970s.

The book is notable for the issue of "Rutland Stone" bound inside. The back page of this issue carries a full-page advertisement for The Rutles' latest album ("Finchley Road"), a single ("Ticket To Rut"), and an assortment of Rutles merchandise. The book also contains the "Vatican Sex Manual" featuring pictures of Eric Idle in various positions in which it is impossible to have sex.

DVD

Despite many requests, none of the episodes have been released on DVD – the show has complicated rights issues, belonging in principle both to the BBC and Idle. Innes has claimed that Idle has no interest in seeing the series released as it reminds him of an unhappy time in his life.

References

  1. ↑ "Rutland Weekend Television". Neil Innes. Retrieved 23 August 2009.
  2. 1 2 https://web.archive.org/web/20070929104427/http://chilled.cream.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8958&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=shoestring&start=60. Archived from the original on 29 September 2007. Retrieved 26 August 2006. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  3. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0561880/

External links

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