Hippies (TV series)

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Hippies was a six part British television comedy series broadcast from the 12 November-17 December 1999. It was created by Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan; the writing partnership most famous for Father Ted, but the scripts were written by Mathews alone. It starred Simon Pegg, Sally Phillips, Julian Rhind-Tutt and Darren Boyd.

[edit] Synopsis

Hippies is set in 1969 in 'swinging London' and is set around Ray Purbbs (Pegg) who is the editor of a counterculture magazine called Mouth (clearly meant to be Oz) which he produces in his flat in Notting Hill Gate. He is aided by Alex Picton-Dinch (Rhind-Tutt), Hugo Yemp (Boyd) and Jill Sprint (Phillips), Sprint is also Purbbs girlfriend, or he thinks she is his girlfriend.

The series delved into late 1960s culture and involved the characters in various ridiculous situations in this setting.

[edit] Critical reaction

The series was Mathews and Linehan's immediate follow up to the hugely popular and highly successful, Father Ted. As such it received a massive amount of pre-release hype which viewers felt let down by after watching the first few episodes, as it did not meet their expectations.

In general it received a savage mauling by critics who missed much of its intended humour thinking it to be a parody of the period, rather than a comedy series which happened to use the period as setting.

A second series was commissioned, but never went any further as Mathews was put off by the negative critical reaction.

Hippies remains unreleased on DVD and has never been repeated on any terrestrial BBC channels, although it has been repeated on Paramount Comedy 2, and the now defunct UK Play.