Introduction
“The Brittas Empire” was a British sitcom running from 1991 to 1997 which featured Chris Barrie as Gordon Brittas, a manager with a Dream but not enough social skills and too much confidence to lead it without everything descending into chaos, as well as a similarly oddball staff to compliment him. This blog post in particular though is specifically focused on a later part in the series’ history, namely Series 6 and 7. By this point, Andrew Norriss and Richard Fegen (the original creators of the series) had left, with Series 5 presumably being intended to be the end of the Series, a theory backed up by the fact that their final episode had everyone being given their happy ending. However, after said special, the BBC decided to continue the series for two series, getting on new writers to fill the void left by the original two’s absence. Despite the attempts of the new writers, however, these new episodes were not well-liked by the viewers for a variety of reasons, and this post attempts to look into why this may be the case.
Characterization
Although important in all forms of writing, a key piece of advice in the writing of sitcoms is to keep your characters consistent. Unfortunately, the new writers did not properly understand the characters, leading to a much less interesting and flanderised cast.
For instance, let’s look at Brittas. At first glance, he may look like your average sitcom monster – hard to like and deeply unpleasant, what with his obsession with rules and his terrible social skills. However, one thing to keep in mind is that whilst these aspects were true, he is a deeper character than one would expect. From Series 1-5, he is consistently depicted as having a “Dream”, a dream that one day, there would be world peace and harmony. This instantly makes him more sympathetic, showing that whilst he’s annoying, he only rarely does it out of genuine malice or selfishness and it’s mainly his character flaws which are holding him back. Additional ways where we see that he is a sympathetic character comes from the fact that he has a strong sense of morality, with episodes like “Sex, Lies and Red Tape” and “Stop Thief!” highlighting how much he opposed morally wrong ideas like stealing and lying, even if they were for the greater good. Not only does this also makes him easier to root for, but it makes him more human when we occasionally see him abandon his morals if he thinks that it can get him further in his goals (like in “Biggles Tells A lie” when he joins in with the lie that Colin is a Leisure Centre Manager after he finds out that his Dream helped inspire Colin’s daughter).
This is something that the new writers forgot. Having rewatched these series, it’s not until “The Disappearing Act” that we hear him even mention his Dream during this period. His morals were also forgotten about during this time, making him come off as your generic obnoxious Manager without the traits which made him interesting or likeable.
Whilst the rest of the cast wasn’t as badly affected as Brittas, they deteriorated as well. For instance, Colin became somewhat dumber, such as genuinely believing that aliens were taking over the centre in “Body Language” and rambling on about a dead woodpecker he found in his garden (for context, this was in response to Brittas asking about what has changed in the Leisure Centre) in “Reviewing the Situation”, whilst Linda’s love of animals (which started out as a desire not to kill an emu in “The Old, Old Story” and which was contradicted in “Brussels Calling” when she showed a willingness to flush a bucket of rats down a toilet) became amplified way too much to the point that she would hold protests against animals being used for entertainment. As such, it made the characters more two-dimensional and less interesting as a whole.
The Departure of Laura and the Temporary Tenure of Penny
Series 6 was also notable for the absence of Laura, who had been written out during the last Series with the excuse that her newly reconciled husband Michael wanted their new child to be raised in America. Whilst other characters who were due to leave were given reasons to return to the Leisure Centre (like Carole, who had to return from Austria after her new love abandoned her, and Brittas, whose death and resurrection caused him to fail the needed medical to go to Brussels), Laura didn’t and she’s never mentioned again. 1 Laura’s role in the show was quite vital – she was the sane woman in a sea of madness and was the true glue which kept the centre running. As the show went on, we saw more exploration of her character through her feelings with her former husband and the hints of romantic feelings between her and Brittas, feelings which were doomed to fail for a variety of factors. Additionally, she was Helen’s confidant, which not only provided reasons for Helen to be in the Leisure Centre but also generated some lovely moments and character examination, (such as her assurances to Helen that Brittas would do better in a role with less social interaction in “Blind Devotion” and her speech about how Brittas is not as bad as one would think in “Assassin”). As such, she was a good well-rounded character and the show suffered when she left.
To its credit, the show tried to fill in the void by introducing Penny Bidmead, the owner of the Sauna and Solarium who like Laura, provided the role of being the sane one. However, she was not a good character. She gave off the impression that she hated everything and everyone in the centre and as such, her only role in the Series was complaining a lot and being Helen’s confident.
Look at “Playing With Fire” for instance, an episode where Helen doesn’t even appear, having gone on holiday to get away from Brittas. Even then, it still heavily involves Laura – Brittas spends the episode wondering if he should have dinner with her and it’s his decision at the end of the episode to do so which ends up just making it hurt more for him next episode when, despite the indications that the dinner and his subsequent visits to her house have led to him having feelings for her back, she decides to start anew with her former husband.
Now look at “Snap Happy”, another episode where Helen is away from the centre this episode, (although she does have a decent subplot where she tries to conquer her fear of heights). There, Penny’s only purpose in that episode was to complain to Brittas at the start of the episode that she needs to do stuff to do at the sauna and then disappear from the plot until the photo attempt at the very end of the episode.
With this in mind, it’s no wonder that not only did almost everyone (with the exception of Helen) hate her in the series, but that it meant that her fate was to simply vanish after Series 6, with little explanation beyond the sauna and solarium being up for lease. Still, although the show improved, it was left without a person to provide the straight man to the centre’s shenanigans (barring Councillor Drugget, who was still only a recurring character even in this series) and it suffered as a result.
The Ending
If you see a discussion of the show online, one thing is quite clear – no one liked the ending. It’s clear to see why – after one of the better plots of the series, where Brittas and Carole find out that Carole’s twins are his, leading to a lovely moment where Brittas accepts Carole’s twins as his, he is knocked unconscious by a goose. After a bizarre dream sequence involving “Colin’s Ark”, Brittas wakes up to find that the entire series was all just a dream. I understand that the writers wanted a bizarre ending for such a bizarre series, but it feels like a big cop-out because it invalidates all of the character development and bonding that we’ve seen throughout the series. It also raises its own questions, like why it didn’t end when Brittas was crushed to death in “The Last Day”. There is also what it does to the relationship between Tim and Gavin, but more on that later.
The Writing
The trouble with the writing of Series 6 and 7 is that one gets the feeling that the scripts weren’t finalized before being sent in, leading to confusing set-ups and unfinished plotlines. Case in point, “At the Double”, where a doppelganger of Brittas, called Vlad, comes to the centre. Despite Vlad’s radically different personality (for one thing, he’s quite flirtatious), different accent and completely different outfit, everyone just rolls with the idea that this is most certainly Brittas and that there is nothing to be concerned about until they bring up what Vlad is saying and suggesting to the (rightfully confused) Brittas.
There are also cases like “Gavin Featherly R.I.P.” which have a tendency to fail to tie up their plots before the episode ends in a satisfactory manner. For instance, a thing which becomes important in the episode is the fact that Gavin never told his parents about his relationship with Tim, which Tim is displeased to hear. Despite this, however, we never see a confrontation between the two regarding this matter – the episode simply ends with Tim locked in the centre as Gavin shows up at the funeral, and it is never followed up on in the final two episodes.
Finally, the episodes lost their deeper meaning. As the show got better and better, it started using its plots to explore topics that were more than just your typical half an hour of mainstream sitcom shenanigans. For instance, “Mr. Brittas Changes Trains” ponders whether it’s a good idea to force people to become someone different through Laura’s conversation with the hypnotist, whilst “The Chop” is an exploration of the unfairness of life, a point made clearly through Brittas’ speech to Tim and his board game about it. This is a feature absent for the most part from Series 6 and 7, leading to what feels at times to be meaningless chaos.
The Increased Bizarreness of the Plots
Up until Series 6, the plots, whilst strange, still had some grounding in reality, with the plot of each episode focusing on exactly what would occur to have led to that situation. For instance, “Not a Good Day”, which focuses on the strange situation of Romans invading the centre, has a good explanation for this – they were Roman War Re-enactors, who have come because Brittas put one of their children under citizen’s arrest. Even the plot point of Brittas being kicked out of Heaven because he was that annoying made sense, with the idea that he was so annoying that not even divine beings wanted to be with him being a hilarious, unique, and in-character idea.
Series 6 and 7 however stretched this to even weirder levels. Series 6 featured an ending where an actual plant alien showed up, whilst another episode during the same series had a doppelganger of Brittas show up at the centre. Meanwhile, Series 7 had Carole generate a bossy alter-ego who cajoles her into becoming Manager of the Centre, whilst the very final episode had Brittas fall under a gypsy’s curse which causes anyone to eat his food to die. Of course, considering the ending of the series, I understand why the writers may want to go all out on the bizarreness, but it does still feel way too over the top at points and it doesn’t explain from a Watsonian perspective why the Dream scenario was more grounded in earlier series.
Tim and Gavin’s Relationship
One of the best things about The Brittas Empire is its depiction of a homosexual couple. Unlike some of its contemporaries like “Will and Grace”, which played the idea that you could be gay for laughs, the relationship between Tim and Gavin was sweet and genuine, with the only character who would be concerned about it, Brittas, being depicted as in the wrong and everyone else accepting it. This kind of fell apart in Series 6 and 7. There were still some sweet couple moments, especially in Series 7, but in Series 6 especially, the couple seemed to be fighting so much that one got the impression that they almost hated each other. (it is admittedly a carryover from Series 5, where Tim was starting to get worried that Gavin was becoming Brittas-like, but it’s taken way too far here). Whilst this fighting was always a theme in the series, here it goes from the fights developing out of Gavin’s misguided desires to protect Tim by keeping secrets from him (deliberately or otherwise) to him being a bit of a jerk, culminating in him flirting right in front of Tim at a model that Brittas had brought in in “Exposed”. This doesn’t even go into the ending, with the reveal that the man who inspired Gavin is actually the apparent husband of the woman who inspired Carole, whilst the man who inspired Tim is instead close with the woman who inspired Linda. In other words, it is revealed that they were never gay, to begin with. With this in mind, no wonder that the ending is disliked.
But did Series 6 and 7 do anything well?
Despite these flaws, however, I still don’t think Series 6 and 7 were rubbish. In fact, they did have their good points. For starters, it’s still funny for the most part, even if it’s not to the same extent as it was from Series 1-5 – the ending to “Snap Happy”, where the final attempt at getting a staff photo ends in chaos, did make me laugh a lot for instance.
I also liked the direction they went with Carole and Helen’s characters. One thing I didn’t like about the first five series is that Carole would repeatedly get a better opportunity only to have it get taken away from her in the most tragic ways. It was good but after a point, it gets draining and whilst they do it again in “Back with a Bang”, they move away from it afterwards, with Series 7 in particular exploring her attempts to become more confident in herself as shown in episodes like “The Elephant’s Child” and “Wake Up The Lion Within” , which is a direction I did like.
With Helen as well, they were able to get her character right. Moments like her spiking the blackcurrant juice with laxatives (in “We All Fall Down”) and selling off the Brittas’ family house (as shown in “Body Language”) show that the writers still understood her as a character, and she is given further development when she becomes a therapist in Series 7, with even some signs that despite her neurotic personality, she’s not too bad at it (like in “Wake Up the Lion Within” where she actually achieves a breakthrough with Brittas).
Finally, Series 7 is an improvement on Series 6, which can be attributed to a couple of factors, including the new writers getting a handle on the characters (as well as going in new directions with them as previously stated in this post), them getting rid of Penny, and much better-plotted episodes. For instance, despite its flaws, “Gavin Featherly R.I.P.” was a fun episode which highlighted the relationship between Tim and Gavin whilst continuing the show’s theme of comedic death and destruction, whilst “Surviving Christmas” gave us a decent Christmas-themed plot and allowed us to see the cast away from their usual workplace.
Conclusion
Looking at these two series brings to mind the world of fanfiction. I love fanfiction and I have written some for this very series, but one issue I found whilst writing it was trying to keep everyone in character, especially when one considers how huge the cast is for this series. As such, it is understandable that these writers, who haven’t written for the series before, struggled to keep the characters right. And credit to them, there were signs that they were beginning to get a handle on them in Series 7, seeing how much better it was than Series 6. Still, it is clearly evident that it just didn’t work out.
Oh well, at least they tried.