Purposely reserved for younger viewers, Rediffusion (later bought by Thames Television) produced the first motion pictures of an early Monty Python team and a couple of others. Shot entirely in black and white, ‘Do Not Adjust Your Set’ was designed to appeal to children, despite the childish title. Appearing alongside the haphazard antics of Eric Idle, Michael Palin and Terry Jones, a very shy and almost creaky cleansed from the sand of TV life, was a totally unknown David Jason. Another young and unknown face on television, but familiar from the theater, was the girly and naturally funny Denise Coffey. Rounding out the team with a motley crew of long-haired old rockers calling themselves The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band fronted by Neil Innes and Viv Stanshall, the cast was truly primed for the surrealism, silliness, and immeasurable confusion that only children love.
Flipping madly between silly sketches and quirky but funny songs, the show was doomed as it seemed in the first series. The show, which first aired on Boxing Day 1967, also did not go as planned. Due to a technical error, the first show was broadcast until the following week, so the first two were accidentally swapped, adding to a confused production team and an unwise audience at home.
As the brainchild of TV producer with the catchy name, Humphrey Barclay, (big names seemed to be a requirement to apply for a TV job back then) had been heavily involved in making versatile and randomly funny radio shows, he was looking to produce something as sharp and witty as well as mildly entertaining in the same vein. Seizing the opportunity to see Jason in a dock end show and Coffey from the Edinburgh fringes, he allowed (like most producers at the time) the main writers of the new show to run free. Each half-hour show was to air on a Thursday at 5:25. The ideas that came up to keep an audience attentive and restless were a collection of characters that appeared over and over again. Probably most notable for the kids were the defiant exploits of the Jason-clad town gentleman who would become, in the blink of an eye, Captain Fantastic and dare to bring his arch-nemesis, Mrs. Black, played rather slyly by Coffey, to justice. Shot in fast framing sequences, the idea was later morphed into shorter versions and later used in more adult shows. Benny Hill had picked up on this idea of fast-action filming, and again, such short serial sketches were frequently used by The Two Ronnies. Such characteristics of a certain era can always be traced back to a particular time!
Part of a series of satirical and more overtly non-descriptive platitudes of that era, Don’t Adjust Your Game was not only seen as a tweenie show, but even bosses felt the financial pinch when adults were found sneaking out of work early on a particular weekday to rush home for this unusual but absurdly brilliant show of laughter. Humorous sidekick dialogues were already making the rounds on the airwaves in honor of The Goon Show that had left a decade earlier. Casual mixes of songs and sketches came in the current form of ‘Round The Horne’, ‘Beyond Our Ken’ and ‘Sorry I’ll Read That Again’; the latter composed by another out-of-the-box Python, John Cleese.
The most glaring feature of this particular children’s show was its successful failure to patronize younger viewers. Somehow hitting the market in the middle with a commercial nail, this show was a revolution in its own right and not just a massive leap up the entertainment ladder for its fledgling cast. In perspective, some would say that it was embarking on the insanity of the themes of each song that really turned the show on its head. With their ridiculous themes, they were a hit with both adults and children. Such classics included ‘My Brother Makes Noises For The Talkies’, ‘I’m The Urban Spaceman’ and, who could forget, ‘My Pink Half Of The Drainpipe’? Although comedic rock never really took off, at least they had the fact that one of their songs had been featured on The Beatles’ ‘Magical Mystery Tour’. For the few of you who may have witnessed the Beatles’ biggest flop, it was ‘Death Cab For Cutie’, which being similar in nature to the movie it appeared in, made no sense…
Towards the end of this irruption of genius collaborating with nerdy qualities, the spectators, each time more numerous and older, found themselves subjected to the youthful animations of an American boy named Terry Gilliam. He first unleashed his surrealism in the form of caricatures and image deformities in “Do Not Adjust Your Set,” circa 1969. The macabre two-minute intervals were surprisingly well received. With television, even in the late sixties, still shackled by the rigidity of the pre-war BBC, watching such disorienting scenes of perfectly priceless paintings being cut in half and pushed through a cannon to be torn to pieces was as risky as ‘Euro Trash’ forty years before its time. Still, Thames seemed to be ready for anything. If the writing team submitted a sketch that was deemed somewhat unsuitable for children, it was being filed away in a cabinet for safekeeping and possibly use for something else in the future. It was not unusual for such material to be dusted off for future reference in Monty Python.
Such, it may be, as a mere children’s show of yesteryear, we still must not be led to underestimate its vital importance in the grand scheme we refer to as the growth of British comedy. The show ran for an incredibly successful 18 months, quite a feat for a children’s show in those days that also incorporated a 50-minute long Christmas Day 1968 special called ‘Don’t Adjust Your Stocking’. It was certainly a smart but also a bold career move for everyone involved in making it. As soon as fame can turn into something more extravagantly international, ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus’ was released just five months after the final show of ‘Do Not Adjust Your Set’. From humble beginnings, ‘Python’ simply jumped out from where he had left off ‘Do Not…’.
After two full series, two directors and two producers, the cameras stopped rolling and the end of an era came. Having been the platform for every member of the cast plus ‘Captain Fantastic’, the revamped stories in the upcoming new title on children’s television, ‘Magpie’, seemed to have little to be sad about. Because everyone who came onto the set had been blessed, he was seen as one of the greatest wombs in history for creating and birthing new talent and better ways of writing comedy. As innovative and manipulative as The Goons, ‘Do Not…’ had earned a place in the history books as the precursor to less tainted Monty Python.
Naturally it came to an end on the radio front ‘Sorry, I’ll read that again’, which had run direct parallels with its TV sister, both strangely coining titles that BBC broadcasters used thousands of times on a daily basis. A clean Cleese came out, while three fellow radio pranksters from the show expanded their feet and similar qualities and joined forces as Tim Brooke Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie became the Wonderful Goodies. Let it not be forgotten here that Cleese took an adult version of ‘Do Not…’ as the short-lived ‘At Last The 1948 Show’. Introducing Future Goodies.
Taking the working title of ‘The Fairly Pointless Show’, ‘Do Not Adjust Your Set’, it was touchingly complete. It grounded certain members for a short time, allowing them to pull their secondary teeth in the gibberish of working a tight schedule and delivering good sketches every week. It allowed young minds to come together and collaborate, but none of them possibly understood its great importance at the time, and none of them knew what was coming around the corner…
So when some of us look back on our childhoods (I’m not speaking here from experience) to the monochromatic days of ‘Do Not Adjust Your Set’, you can see how children’s entertainment has to come full circle at all. What the team found in 1967 was the ability to amuse young people without having to sit with silly voices dancing dolls up and down on their knees and imitating voices. There was a definite market of middle-aged kids where dazzling them with a handful of nursery rhymes wasn’t going to cut it. I see children’s entertainment now as the very thing that ‘Don’t Adjust Your Game’ managed to avoid, making a young mind feel inadequate and stupid.
As a product of the seventies, it was not surprising that the first thing my parents would look at me in front of was Monty Python…
It was better than Playschool…
‘Don’t adjust your equipment’ were;
eric idle
michael palin
david jason
Denise Coffey
Terry Jones
Terry Gilliam (second series)
‘Don’t Adjust Your Set’ (9 surviving episodes left)
Released in 2005 it can be found new on Amazon.com for £16
The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band are currently completing their 2006 tour with Phil Jupitus and Adrian Edmondson, find out at http://www.bonzodog.co.uk
scrapbooks;
‘The Donut in Grandma’s Greenhouse’ 1968
‘Anthropology – The beast within’ 1999
‘Fight Poodles and Win’ 2006
© michelle hatcher (sam1942 bye and dooyoo) 2006