List of The Brittas Empire characters
This is a list of characters from The Brittas Empire, a British television sitcom that aired on BBC1 from 1991 to 1997.
Gordon Brittas
Gordon Wellesley Brittas GM manages the ill-fated Whitbury New Town Leisure Centre.Brittas is dedicated to his job and cares dearly for everyone around him, including his unstable wife, Helen. He has grand ambitions of making the world a better place and aims to fulfil his dream of bringing people together through sport. However, despite his noble and well-meant intentions, Brittas' management only causes disaster and chaos, resulting in pathetically low attendance rates, catastrophic fires, floods, injuries and even deaths on several occasions. In typical bureaucratic style, he is obsessed with paperwork and forces his staff and customers to fill in thousands of forms with the most banal details, such as lost property claims. Throughout the entire series, he remains blissfully unaware of his total incompetence as a manager and the negative effect he has on everybody around him.
An example of Brittas' tactlessness is in the episode "Temple Of The Body", where he suspects someone is having sex in the centre, telling Carole that she has nothing to worry about because whatever is happening is only with "younger and more attractive women, such as Linda, Julie and Laura".
Brittas is also incredibly petty and pedantic, insisting on over-complicated forms at reception, and ridiculous rules on what not to wear in the centre, only serving to frustrate potential customers and the centre staff. In the last series, Brittas rigs up a computer system to control every aspect of the centre, which overcomplicates even the simplest task of distributing floats by the swimming pools, and results in someone drowning.
Brittas is also accident-prone and often makes careless mistakes, sometimes with fatal consequences. For example, in "Laura's Leaving", Brittas tugs at a wire which drops a live electric heater into the main swimming pool, electrocuting a group of Pentecostal Christians performing a baptism ceremony in the water. Alternatively, if a small problem does develop despite his precautions, Brittas will try to solve it, thus creating a much larger problem. Helen points out in the second episode that "once starts dealing with little problems, they don't go away; you just get bigger ones". Then, in Series 3, the disasters in the centre typically start with something trivial going wrong, but then growing in severity. Laura points out that Brittas "gets all the difficult bits right" but when it "comes to the really simple things you blow it".
Gordon has a twin brother, Horatio Brittas, a priest who shares his dream of bringing communities together. Gordon has five children with Helen, three that he adopted from her earlier marriage and twin boys they had together; twins being a trait which runs in his side of the family. Unknown to him until the very last episode of the series, Carole's twins are also his — the result of a boozy mix-up at Julie's New Year's Eve party, where Carol and Helen happened to dress in identical tiger costumes, leading to Gordon's mistake.
Brittas can in many respects be considered a forerunner to David Brent of The Office; his lack of self-awareness and ability to alienate and offend his staff, despite his genuine good intentions, are examples of commonality between the characters.
The writers of the series, Andrew Norriss and Richard Fegen, decided to make Series 5 the final one. Thus, Brittas is "killed" by a falling water tank. However, he is brought back to life in bizarre circumstances and Chris Barrie returns to play Brittas for a further two series, as the BBC ultimately wanted it to continue. New writers were brought in to replace the series' creators; the actual ending was in 1997, when Brittas, at the end of Series 7, wakes up on a train heading for Whitbury. According to this ending, the entire series was a dream.
Helen Brittas
Helen Brittas is Gordon's unstable, unfaithful wife.Helen starts out as a depressed housewife, disillusioned and agitated by her oblivious husband and his grand schemes, but gradually she becomes more neurotic and dependent on prescribed anti-depressants. Dr. Gray, her concerned family doctor, is reluctant to prescribe any further medication until he can speak to Gordon; a brief appointment with both Helen and Gordon is sufficient to convince Dr. Gray to write out an extra-strength prescription "for the really bad days".
Helen often requires support from Brittas's deputy Laura Lancing, and frequently pours her heart out to Laura, telling her the stress Gordon is causing her, and about her latest one night stands, flings or stupid mistakes. Helen relies on other people to lie for her, to cover up her addictive shoplifting and her frequent cheating on Gordon with other men.
Helen was married twice before her wedding to Gordon; in Series 3, episode 6, when discussing concerns over his legacy to the world, Gordon explains to Laura that the three sons he and Helen live with are her children from a previous marriage. One of them is named Jonathan, and he appears to be of secondary school age ; it is indicated that his chemistry teacher may be the manufacturer or supplier of some of the numerous tablets that Helen uses for medication. Another son is named Tom. The third son is not named, and in the final episode, Gordon says they have only four children: it is possible that the other stepson has grown up and left home. Helen and Gordon go on to have twin boys, Matthew and Mark; due to a parking dispute en route to the hospital, the children are delivered by student nurses on a hospital bed in the middle of Whitbury High Street, the bed being part of a fundraising float for the students' "rag week".
In season 2 episode "Back from the Dead" following the apparent death of Gordon, during a trip to Bulgaria, Helen is seen preparing to marry a man she met at his cremation. This marriage does not go ahead as Gordon returns home to find her in a wedding dress before the wedding ceremony has begun. It may also be argued that Helen had another husband; on a chance encounter in Series 6, Episode 4 she is reunited with Harry Johnson, a visiting spiritual guru whom she first met as a teenager or young adult. She fondly remembers how a "hippy vicar" conducted what she believed to be a mock wedding, only for Harry to reveal that the minister had since become the Bishop of Maidstone. Overcome by horror, Helen seriously considers living with Harry for a trial period of "three or four years" until a blow to the head renders him unconscious. The outcome is never overtly stated but Helen apparently remains with Gordon and does seem to love him.
Helen's erratic and often illegal behaviour make life difficult for Gordon on several occasions. During Series 3, a department store correctly accuses Helen of stealing a wedding dress, some shoes, a handbag, a pair of gloves, and a barbecue set; at this point, it is made clear that her criminal record includes nine previous charges of shoplifting. In "The Chop", Gordon resigns from the Leisure Centre in order to protect her when she admits to taking £300 from the Centre's petty cash to buy a dog. In Series 6, Helen nearly poisons everybody in Whitbury by spiking fruit flavoured cordial from the local shop with laxative as a revenge on the cordial manufacturer for not hiring her twins for their television commercial.
Helen also possesses a latent murderous streak, once arranging for Gordon to be murdered while on holiday in Bulgaria. On another occasion one of her children is given a D grade for some English homework; having been the one who had actually done the work, Helen responds by reversing her car into the classroom in attempt to kill the teacher in revenge. She later reassures Laura that the teacher "swung up on a light fitting" and so was not harmed.
Helen appears in all episodes, apart from one in Series 4 when she "accidentally" books the family holiday to Cornwall on the wrong week, thus leaving Gordon unable to attend; a mistake she had also made the previous year.
Laura Lancing/Farrell
Laura Farrell is the Deputy Manager Dry of the Centre.Laura is calm and extremely efficient at management, often bringing normality back to the centre after a disaster has escalated. She is also the voice of reason, talking sense into those around her. Laura is usually warm and understanding, and has people's best interests at heart. A common thing she does is comfort colleague Tim when he suspects boyfriend Gavin is having an affair.
Laura understands that however much chaos her boss Gordon causes with his half-baked ideas, he means well, so she occasionally defends him from criticism from the staff, councillors and even his unhinged wife, Helen. Laura is also often seen lending support to Helen, who goes into states of shock and panic whenever Laura is away or planning to leave. Helen is convinced the centre will not cope without Laura, with no one there to "pick up the pieces" after Gordon has caused another disaster.
Gordon is seen to be very fond of Laura, perhaps because of her kind, helpful nature and his lack of close friends in his personal life. In later series, hints are dropped at a possible romance between Gordon and Laura. In one episode of Series 3, she kisses Brittas in a flurry of emotion, leaving him in a state of shock. No more is said about it, but in the next series, when Helen deliberately books a holiday that she knows Gordon cannot attend, Laura proves very supportive towards him, and the two bond further. A scene in Series 5 shows Laura finally confessing her feelings for Gordon and passionately kissing him, although this turns out to be Gordon fantasising. As a result of this, Laura is the only woman with whom Gordon has ever considered having an affair.
Laura is legally married to Michael T. Farrell III, the son of an American billionaire. However, she has been estranged from him for over two years and uses her maiden name, Lancing, in everyday life until he appears one day searching for her at the Centre. Despite the best efforts of a jealous Gordon, Laura gradually reconciles with Farrell again, and becomes pregnant with his child. Because of this, she turns down the opportunity to take over from Gordon as Manager of the Leisure Centre, and moves to Chicago, United States, to start a new life with Farrell at the end of Series 5.