Still Monkeeing With The Censors
The last post on this blog was an article in which a musician talks about America’s attitude toward Spitting Image in 1986. Today, for a change, we post an article in which a musician talks about America’s attitude toward Spitting Image in 1985. Let it never be said that we don’t offer our readers variety here on Smarter Than The Average - OK, Gary Bushell?
In 1981 ex-Monkee Michael Nesmith scored a hit with his home video release Elephant Parts. A combination of artfully-shot songs and sketches, the home video exclusive won the first ever Grammy Award for Video Of The Year and its musical sequences (two of which, Rio and Cruisin’, were produced as far back as 1976) became some of the earliest music videos shown on MTV. This success lead to NBC, perhaps misguidedly, commissioning a television series spin-off, Michael Nesmith In Television Parts. Following the US television premiere of Elephant Parts on NBC on Thursday the 7th of March 1985 (a half-hour cutdown of the production had been broadcast in the UK on Wednesday the 6th of April 1983 - it ran from 8:30pm to 9pm on Channel 4, between Brookside and the film M*A*S*H) and a half-hour preview broadcast at 9:30pm on Thursday the 7th of March 1985 (and reviewed in the Wednesday the 13th of March 1985 edition of Variety), the six half-hour episodes of Michael Nesmith In Television Parts started their run in the 8pm Friday slot on the 14th of June 1985. The series was abandoned mid-run on the 5th of July, with the final three episodes combined into a ninety-minute replacement for the Saturday the 27th of July 1985 edition of Saturday Night Live. [Source: The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows 1946 - Present by Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh.]
Nesmith asked many of his old friends to work on the series, including employing his old bandmate Mickey Dolenz to direct and produce a number of segments. This is not as unusual choice as it first appears, as by this point in his career Dolenz was fastly establishing himself in the UK as a director-producer of small-screen comedy. Following his 1977 run in the London theatrical production of Nilsson’s The Point in which he co-starred with another Monkee, Davy Jones, Dolenz decided to stay in the UK and become a full-time director. Armed with a meagre showreel of commercials and documentaries he had made in the US, Dolenz attended an interview at the BBC the result of which would be directing an episode of Première, the BBC2 anthology drama series for first-time directors. The episode, titled Story Without A Hero, was about a mother and daughter who join the Hell’s Angels in search of their missing husband and father. It took two months to film and between the show’s shooting and its airing on Thursday the 13th of December 1979 Dolenz had, after a spell directing two episodes of ITV’s religious music show Pop Gospel (his two editions broadcast on Tuesdays the 13th and 20th of February 1979), fallen into directing comedy.
Luckily for Dolenz, in the UK in 1979 theatrical shorts were coming back (briefly) into fashion and Dolenz was hired to direct two short comedy films; for Paramount he made Balham: Gateway To The South, featuring Robbie Coltrane and based on the hilarious Peter Sellers monologue of 1958 written by Frank Muir and Denis Norden (yet for this short the script was inexplicably rewritten witlessly by two advertising agency men, John Kelly and John O’Driscoll) and for 20th Century Fox he shot around Christmas 1979 The Box, based on Michael Palin and Terry Jones’ surreal actorless one-act play of 1976 Buchanan’s Finest Hour - indeed, this was the short film’s original title, judging by an interview with Dolenz in the Saturday the 17th of November 1979 edition of Screen International. These, plus a few hit productions in the West End, gave Dolenz the necessary clout to get his foot into the door of television, and from 1980 Dolenz directed many comedy shows for London Weekend Television (mainly children’s sitcoms, but also half-a-dozen episodes of No Problem!) as well as one for Channel Four: For 4 Tonight, Ruby Wax’s Anglicised version of Fernwood Tonite. He had also elongated his first name to Michael, so as to avoid people confusing him with the titular robot on the set of Metal Mickey.
Which takes us to 1985, and Dolenz being asked by Michael Nesmith to direct sketches for Michael Nesmith In Television Parts. Dolenz had, since the last time he worked with Nesmith, become a huge fan of British comedy having worked in the genre for a number of years, and accordingly decided to rope in his favourite British comedians of the time to appear in his sketches. So what exists in NBC’s archive is a selection of exclusive sketches featuring top British alternative comedians recorded during their prime of their careers, none of which have been seen in the UK. According to Dolenz’s autobiography, comedians in these sketches include Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmonson, Alexei Sayle, Mel Smith, Griff Rhys-Jones and the puppets of Spitting Image.
Elephant Parts is still widely popular what with it being easily available on DVD, where it receives good reviews every time it is reissued, yet its offspring Michael Nesmith In Television Parts, despite its all-star comedy cast both British and American, never become the cult it should have been. Two compilations amounting to around two-thirds of the series were released on home video in the US at the time, but have, over twenty years later, to date not been reissued. A complete DVD release of all six of the series’ episodes plus the half-hour preview show would be most welcome.
This is from page 13 of the Daily Express, Saturday the 14th of September 1985:
Still monkeying with censors
MICKEY DOLENZ was the mop-haired drummer of the Monkees - the group who got the funniest looks from everyone they met back in the late 60’s.
The colourful clowns of the peace and love generation disbanded in 1969 after being screamed at by love-sick girls in Europe and the States.
Michael, as he now prefers to be called, has left the hysterical teeny-boppers far behind.
In a sensible dark jacket and carrying a briefcase, his face still creases as he smiles, but gone are the wacky looks and excited yells.
Michael recently did some sketches in America about the Royal Family with the Spitting Image team, only to find them strictly censored by the network.
“I have got the telegram framed on my wall saying you cannot use the word poo-poo,” he said. “It’s ridiculous.”
“In the Monkees we were always trying to push back the censorship. We tried to do satirical anti-war stuff and had a hell of a time. The Young Ones have come the nearest to what we attempted. But you couldn’t transmit 30 seconds of them in America.”
Settled
Michael is now settled in Britain for good with wife Trina and their three daughters. Another daughter, Ami, from a previous marriage, is living in Hollywood.
For more than 10 years he has been working hard to establish himself as a bona-fide director with credits such as the West End production of Bugsy Malone and TV shows like Metal Mickey and Luna.
He has just finished a new series with Bill Oddie called From The Top, which goes out on Monday on ITV at 4.45 p.m. And he is about to embark on his first full-length feature film with Bruce Robinson, who won an Oscar for his screenplay for The Killing Fields.
