Bottom (TV series)

Bottom is a British sitcom created by Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson that ran for three series on BBC2 from 1991 to 1995. It focuses on Richard "Richie" Richard and Edward Elizabeth "Eddie" Hitler, two unemployed, crude, and perverted flatmates living in Hammersmith, London, who aspire to better themselves. Bottom became known for its chaotic, nihilistic humour and violent slapstick comedy. In 2004, Bottom was ranked 45th in a BBC poll for Britain's Best Sitcom.
Mayall and Edmondson had worked together since the mid-1970s, and developed Bottom as an extension of their own relationship and their on-screen characters in The Young Ones and Filthy Rich & Catflap, their earlier BBC sitcoms. In addition to the series, the pair completed five stage show tours between 1993 and 2003, and adapted the sitcom into a feature-length film, Guest House Paradiso, released in 1999. A proposed spin-off series featuring various Bottom characters, Hooligan's Island, was cancelled in 2013 before production. Mayall's death in the following year ended plans for a revival.

Cast

Main characters

Adrian Edmondson as Edward "Eddie" Elizabeth Hitler. Edmondson described Eddie as "a very strange kind of mellow" version of Vyvyan from The Young Ones. He is "a man with no morals and a devious tiny-time entrepreneur".
Rik Mayall as Richard "Richie" Richard. He is "an old-fashioned moralist, hypocrite and small-minded virgin".

Recurring characters

Steven O'Donnell as Spudgun
Christopher Ryan as Dave Hedgehog
Lee Cornes as Dick Head
Roger Sloman as Mr Harrison
Premise

Eddie and Richie are two pathetic, sex-crazed, slobby flatmates living in a filthy, damp flat at 11 Mafeking Parade in Hammersmith, London. Mayall described them as "unemployed survivors". They spend their time concocting desperate schemes to convince women to have sex with them, including buying sex spray, forging money, and pretending to be aristocrats. Their plans are never successful, and the stress of their miserable lives can cause them to become irritable with each other. Whenever tensions hit a breaking point, Richie and Eddie end up fighting. Both men are immature. Richie is a virgin; he is insecure and clueless on how to talk to women. Despite being a penniless slob, he occasionally projects a pompous sort of snobbery in an attempt to impress others and boost his self-esteem; he is sexually frustrated and obsessed with losing his virginity. Eddie, the more popular of the two, enjoys drinking regularly, and often secretly steals family heirlooms and cash from Richie, although he occasionally has inventive moments, like building a cash forger, an electric toilet, and a time machine. Eddie's friends, the gormless Spudgun and Dave Hedgehog, both fear Richie, believing him to be psychotic. Although the four of them sometimes venture out, usually to the local pub, the Lamb and Flag, most of the episodes are set within the confines of the squalid flat.

Music

The opening and closing themes are cover versions of B. B. King's "BB's Blues" and The Mar-Keys' "Last Night", respectively. Both themes and the episode bridge instrumentals are played by The Bum Notes, an ensemble featuring Edmondson.

Production

Development

Mayall and Edmondson first met as drama students at Manchester University in 1975, when Edmondson joined the improvisational comedy troupe 20th Century Coyote, of which Mayall was a member. The act grew in popularity following successful runs at the Edinburgh Fringe and the Comic Strip in London, which led to the pair starring in the stage and television double act The Dangerous Brothers and sitcoms The Young Ones and Filthy, Rich & Catflap. After the latter ended in 1987, the pair "drifted away" for a period before reuniting after they caught the attention of producer and executive Paul Jackson, who had also worked on The Young Ones, and pitched initial ideas they had for a new sitcom. Jackson was interested enough, and Mayall and Edmondson proceeded to write a draft script. Episodes were developed around improvisational writing, and Mayall recalled Edmondson "did the typing and he allowed me to go to the off licence to buy all the drinks." Upon delivering their scripts, the BBC expressed concern that the show could not sustain itself with two characters alone, to which Mayall and Edmondson used Tony Hancock and Sid James as an example, and got their way. Mayall said that the BBC was too focused on the show's content being "morally sound and politically correct", but gave the green-light on the series.
The show's original working title was Your Bottom, for the humour of people having to say "I saw 'Your Bottom' on television last night", before it was shortened because Mayall said they "liked the shape of the word." It started as a joke until they learned that Alan Yentob, then head of BBC2, disliked the title which convinced the pair to stick with it. Mayall added that the title was deliberate to make viewers think of "bottom jokes", but that it also reflects on the show's premise of "two guys at the bottom of the heap". Mayall and Edmondson were aware of the failures of other sitcoms, and purposely wrote tight scripts. Edmondson said writing Bottom was liberating "because it's obvious what the idea is – to be as funny as possible." The pair based Eddie and Richie on characters that they had improvised with as part of 20th Century Coyote, and on their own friendship. They made a conscious effort to avoid any pop culture or contemporary references when writing, as The Young Ones had been popular with young people and instead wanted to portray characters who had left student life behind and reached their "thirties and forties". Instead, the two were interested in more everyday scenarios "that have always been there", such as a gas meter reading. Eddie and Richie have been compared to their characters on The Young Ones, but 10 years older. After the first series had been recorded, Mayall ranked Bottom as their best work and marked "a new chapter" in his relationship with Edmondson.
In June 1990, a pilot episode was recorded which was later titled "Contest" and broadcast as part of the first series. Problems over content came to light when recording began. Mayall recalled they were allowed three "bloodies" or "bloody hell"s per episode, and arguments were often had with as many as 20 BBC executives who went on the set. Some executives criticised the series for being sexist, but Mayall pointed out that they would have had more women on the show if they had not cut around twenty "shagging scenes" that were written, and argued that lesbian scenes were also removed. After the first series was recorded in June and July 1991, Bottom was first announced in August, when, in an attempt to attract viewers, the BBC reported that it had commissioned over 400 hours of new television programming for the upcoming autumn schedule. This included new productions from comics known as the Comic Strip, which included Mayall and Edmondson for Bottom and Dawn French for Murder Most Horrid.
Bottom ended after three series in February 1995. Edmondson said that one of the reasons for stopping the show was the struggle to come up with new ideas as "we'd already hit each other with everything in the flat". Mayall supported this view, saying they took the show as far as it could go on television while continuing the franchise with stage tours and home video releases, preferring to retain full creative control over the characters. In 2000, he said that Richie and Eddie had become "bigger than we are".

Recording

Each episode was recorded in front of a live audience. The original scripts can be found in the published script books, and several completely removed scenes were included in the VHS release Fluff that consisted mostly of bloopers. Several of these scenes, as well as some smaller sections of dialogue also removed for timing reasons, are included in DVD releases.
The final episode of the second series, 's Out", was set on Wimbledon Common involving the antics of a flasher. It was not broadcast as part of the original series after Rachel Nickell was murdered on Wimbledon Common, due to which the BBC delayed its broadcast until a rerun of the second series on 10 April 1995.

Spin-offs

Stage shows

Mayall and Edmondson held five nationwide theatre tours of Bottom between 1993 and 2003, adapting the original series into a stage show. The first tour, Bottom Live, lasted 43 dates across 10 weeks in 1993. The 2001 tour consisted of 76 dates, which included a show at the National Arena in Birmingham to over 4,500 people. The Weapons Grade Y-Fronts Tour included 40 dates. The stage shows were often cruder than the sitcom with stronger language, and developed over time to include settings outside the flat, including a prison cell and a remote island. There were several instances of the pair getting carried away with the planned stunts, resulting in one of them getting cuts on their head. Edmondson said: "Rik would tell them 'Don't be scared, it happens all the time.' We'd just carry on, then go off to hospital afterwards to be sewn up." A show from each tour was recorded and released for home video.

Title	Year	Recording location
Bottom Live	1993	Southampton Mayflower Theatre
Bottom Live 2: The Big Number Two Tour	1995	Oxford New Theatre
Bottom Live 3: Hooligan's Island	1997	Bristol Hippodrome
Bottom Live 2001: An Arse Oddity	2001	Nottingham Royal Concert Hall
Bottom Live 2003: Weapons Grade Y-Fronts Tour	2003	Southend The Cliffs Pavilion