Introduction
Ah, sports – one of the greatest pastimes of the human world. I personally never really got into sports – I was one of those nerdy kids who would much rather prefer to linger in the toilets all class rather than do P.E. (well, I didn’t really – I was one of those who cared deeply about my grades but I would have if I could have). Still, it is a pastime so timeless that there have been numerous attempts to adapt it into comedy, some more successful than others. Modern comedic takes on it include Ted Lasso and The First Team, whilst earlier attempts include Renford Rejects and Fantasy Football League. Did you know however that there was an attempt at a mainstream sitcom starring Chris Barrie in the 1990s? Well, you might do, but let’s read on anyway, shall we?
Tell us more about this show.
The show in question is A Prince Among Men, a show which came on the heels of Chris Barrie’s previous two sitcoms, (The Brittas Empire and Red Dwarf respectively). According to “The Birmingham Post”, at the time, the idea of Prince was something tossed about by Barrie and Mike Stephens (at the time the director for The Brittas Empire) during the majority of Brittas’ run, with an earlier idea of making Prince a gameshow host briefly considered (although rejected due to gameshows being too “in” at the time) before the show finally aired in September 1997, several months after the conclusion of Brittas.
Although Stephens helped direct the show, the actual creators were a pair called Tony Millian and Mike Walling. Now, these two have had a rocky history with sitcoms – whilst they have had some success creating episodes for other sitcoms (like Birds of a Feather and Chucklevision), the sitcoms that they created themselves are not remembered remarkably well (see Not with a Bang and Trouble In Mind). They have however worked together with Barrie beforehand, writing some scripts for the later series of The Brittas Empire, so they do have some experience working for his strengths and weaknesses (even if they were for the weaker Series 6 and 7).1
So what’s the Situation in this Situation Comedy?
Gary Prince is much like some of the earlier characters which Chris Barrie has played – namely that he’s a bit of a git. He used to both live dirt poor and be treated poorly by his family (as Vince Hibbert puts it, “your picture was always in the paper because they were always trying to get you adopted.”) before his talents in football playing were discovered and he went on to a lustrous career. Nowadays, he has retired, and he spends his time either trying to get new businesses off the ground, being an egotistical smeghead to his colleagues and his wife, or having to deal with the fact that despite what he thinks, he really has no idea how his gimmick-laden house in Cheshire really works.
Of course, one thing that a sitcom always needs is a supporting cast, and this sitcom doesn’t disappoint. Lisel (Francesca Hunt) is his German wife, a successful translator who Prince constantly tries to improve in an unpleasant sort of way.
Beverly (Susie Blake) and Sonia (Samantha Power) are his secretaries. Beverly is the more straight woman of the two and is usually the one who tries to get Prince to see the error of his ways, whilst Sonia spends most of her screen-time either being an idiot or going on about her upcoming wedding to her hopeful husband and alleged soulmate Kevin (basically Colin from The Brittas Empire except always off-screen).
There’s also Dave Perry (Cliff Parisi), who has a habit of doing the dirty work for Prince, and business manager Mark Fitzsherbet (Tim Bentinck), who can be just as much of an idiot as Prince. Finally, there’s Vince Hibbert (Bryan Pringle), the local publican, who was the one who spotted Prince’s talent at an early age and insists that he was the father that Prince never had, even though nowadays, he’s more likely to point out the flaws within Prince than be that supportive of him (and that’s not getting into the fact that Prince did have a father growing up).
What did everyone think of it?
They thought it was terrible. Opinion pieces of the day were very critical of it, with The Guardian saying that it “could seriously damage your evening” and that it could have been an improvement if it had taken the concept of Gary and the world of celebrity more seriously. The Evening Standard took a more mixed stance on it, saying that whilst it enjoyed Beverly and Vince as characters, the humor felt dated and the jokes were unfunny. Finally, the Independent argued that the scripts were rubbish and that it felt dated as a sitcom. This was a viewpoint taken by the audience apparently as well, who were so repelled by the show that the BBC, who had made the decision to renew the show for another series, moved it on to a lunchtime slot of Sundays halfway into said series’ run before canceling it entirely.
Nowadays when the show is remembered, the general consensus is that it is the black sheep of the three major Chris Barrie sitcoms, with people warning others not to watch it, lest they burn in a blaze of unfunniness. Mark Lewisohn, writing in his book “Radio Times” Guide to TV Comedy, felt that it didn’t work as a sitcom, feeling that it was because Prince was “wasn’t extreme enough – for, despite his surface flaws, he seemed a decent sort underneath, someone who truly wanted to be liked”. Indeed, it is fitting that the only place that you can find this sitcom is on Youtube, with Episode 2 (“Changing Revs”) having the quality of a Game Boy Advance video cartridge and the majority of Series 2 (aside from “Ghost Story”) missing altogether.
But did I, a 20-year-old who has a special interest in a sitcom from 1991, enjoy it?
Err, no.
Well, for starters, I might as well talk about what I liked about the series, although I’ll warn you, it’s a very short list. Firstly, I have a soft spot for the theme tune. It’s extremely catchy -I sometimes put up an episode just to hear it at times – and it definitely feels like a tune that Prince would have had written for himself in-universe, what with its proclamation that he’s a winner, a star, and that he hasn’t had fame gone to his head. Finally, some of the visual gags (like the punchline that Prince and Lisel had bought a TV instead of a microwave in “Changing Revs”) were found by me to be decent enough, and there are one or two one-liners in there which aren’t too bad. Finally, some of the characters were okay, mainly due to their actors putting on a decent performance, although not many.
So now the flaws. Whilst I’m more positive towards the series than most other people (for one thing, I could actually watch through it), I’m sorry to say that this is a fairly weak offering. The first thing to note is that this show was promoted as a “comedy-drama”. I heard somewhere that during the time period, this phrase was used to describe shows which were less actual mixes of comedy and drama, and more shows that were simply unfunny and I think it definitely applies here. The closest I can think of to a dramatic plotline is maybe Prince’s whole family situation, and even then it’s played for laughs (not good laughs mind you…). Otherwise, it’s just a mediocre straightforward sitcom.
For starters, Gary Prince is just uninteresting as a character. Now, don’t get me wrong, I always love Chris Barrie’s performances and he definitely puts on a good performance but at the end of the day, he has little characterization beyond “cheeky Northerner egotistical git” and he has no real goal or drive (beyond his latest hare-brained scheme of the week) that makes people want to tune in week after week for him. The sad thing is that there is definitely an inkling of depth to Prince’s character – as mentioned in several episodes, despite his insistence that all Northern families are like that, his family hated him and preferred his brother. The show could have used this to explore his character a bit more, like have his ego result from an attempt to prove that he is better than his family, but the show never really uses this beyond comic potential. In fact, I agree with The Guardian – in better hands, the character could have been used for a deeper look into the world of celebrity and the attempts one makes at staying relevant. Unfortunately, it is not in better hands.
Of course, there have been sitcom stars with little redeeming qualities, so what’s different about Prince. The first thing is that the scripts are limp. The jokes are terrible and the plotlines are meandering and unfocused, usually not starting to come together until near the end and with very weak pay-off. It’s most notable with the first episode, which feels way too clunky. There is a main plot (Gary thinking he’s going to appear on “This Is Your Life”), but it doesn’t really come into play until the final third of the episode, with the rest being scenes that don’t really advance the plot in any meaningful way. Additionally, the show has a terrible habit of creating interesting situations for comedy (like the time Prince took a bunch of blind children sky-diving) and placing it entirely off-screen as a form of terrible Noodle Incident.
Second is the fact that the supporting cast has the flatness of a bottle of coke that has been left in the sun for too long. Sonia I feel is the worst of the lot – she has an annoyingly squeaky voice, one of her traits (discussing her marriage to Kevin, a character whose comic potential is wasted by his entire lack of screen-time) is something both unfunny and not something you can mine that comic potential from anyway, and she otherwise has little character beyond “dumb Northerner secretary”. The other characters are better, but either don’t get enough screentime to become interesting (such as Beverly, who had potential as the more sane foil to Prince’s antics, but simply isn’t used too often) or are simply forgettable (Dave isn’t that annoying, but I can’t think of any real character trait which applies to him beyond “Prince’s right-hand man”) The best character aside from Prince is Lisel, mainly thanks to her actor putting on a decent performance and for feeling less like a stereotype than the others, but she’s somewhat underutilized as well.
Best Episode?
This is tough because none of the episodes really stuck out to me as being that great, but for me, it’s probably a tie between “Ghost Story” and “Family Matters”. “Family Matters” has the most interesting plot (Prince trying to engineer a reunion with his mother) and it is the one where we get the most backstory exploration of Prince, although still not enough to make him interesting. Meanwhile, “Ghost Story” not only has slightly stronger gags and a tighter plot, but also teases an improved Series 2 which is unfortunately now lost to the void.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the show is aggressively mediocre, so much so that you can’t even enjoy it in a “So Bad It’s Good” way – it’s not the worst in the world, Barrie’s performance is decent enough, and there are hints of potential in the script, but you’re better off finding your Barrie kick elsewhere.
In fact, if I’m going to be honest, the gameshow host idea sounded better than this piece of rubbish.
… Still, if you’re masochistic enough, it is all up on this link (many thanks to “Chris Barrie Fans” for uploading the footage).
- Although they did do the best episode of the latter two series of The Brittas Empire (Surviving Christmas) and as such, I will fight people for that. [↩]