Alas Smith and Jones was a British comedy sketch television series featuring Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones. It was broadcast on the BBC from 1982 to 1998. From 1989 to 1995, it was called Smith and Jones.
The series followed in the footsteps of Not the Nine O'Clock News in its use of taboo-breaking material and sketches in questionable taste (as well as bad language), and also featured head-to-head 'duologues' between Smith and Jones. The series shared several script writers with Not the Nine O'Clock News including Clive Anderson, Colin Bostock-Smith and used Chris Langham as a cast regular. Other writers included Andy Hamilton.
The show's title was a pun on that of the American television series Alias Smith and Jones. The head-to-head sketches were very much in the Pete and Dud mould - Smith was the idiot who knew everything, Jones the idiot who knew nothing.
The series was one of the first to be commissioned by the BBC from an independent company, Talkback Productions of which Smith and Jones were also directors. The format of the Head to Head with similar characters was used by Smith and Jones in a series of commercials.
The show also had a brief run in the United States on A&E and PBS.
In 2006 Smith and Jones returned with The Smith and Jones Sketchbook, recorded in front of a live audience acting as a look back at their earlier shows.
Schedule
The show ran for 10 series with 5 to 7 episodes of 30 minutes duration
:- December 27, 1982: A 5 minute special, broadcast as part of The Funny Side Of Christmas
- January 31, 1984 - March 6, 1984: Series One, 6 episodes
- October 31, 1985 - December 5, 1985: Series Two, 6 episodes
- September 18, 1986 - October 23, 1986: Series Three, 6 episodes
- October 15, 1987 - November 26, 1987: Series Four, 7 episodes
- December 21, 1988: 40 minutes special, Alas Sage And Onion
- November 16, 1989 - December 28, 1989: Series Five, 6 episodes (then titled "Smith & Jones", thus dropping the "Alas")
- November 22, 1990 - January 3, 1991: Series Six, 6 episodes
- October 22, 1992 - December 3, 1992: Series Seven, 6 episodes
- September 6, 1995 - October 18, 1995: Series Eight, 6 episodes
- June 19, 1997 - July 24, 1997: Series Nine, 6 episodes
- September 9, 1998 - October 14, 1998: Series Ten, 6 episodes.
Commercial releases
A compilation DVD release (coded for region 2) was scheduled for August 8 2005 by the BBC, but has been delayed many times (its latest scheduled release was for December 26, 2007, according to sites such as play.com):Two VHS releases featuring footage from Series 5 & 6 of "Alas Smith & Jones" (then titled "Smith & Jones"), were released in 1991. The second video released in 1993 featured footage from Series 1-4 of the series, specially the second series.
Tie-in books included The Smith and Jones World Alas (a humorous gazetteer of the world's countries) and The Lavishly Tooled Smith & Jones instant Coffee Table Book (co-written with Clive Anderson), which was designed to look as if it could be made into a coffee table.
External links
- Comedy Guide
- Comedy Guide
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Thursday July 03, 2008 at 15:17:29 PDT (GMT -0700)
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