Nighty Night

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Nighty Night
Image:Nightynight.jpg
Nighty Night DVD cover
Genre Black Comedy
Creator(s) Julia Davis
Starring Julia Davis
Angus Deayton
Rebecca Front
Kevin Eldon
Mark Gatiss
Ruth Jones
Michael Fenton Stevens
Felicity Montagu
Country of origin UK
No. of episodes 12
Production
Running time 30 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel BBC Three, BBC Two
Original run January 6, 2004 – October 11, 2005 could possibly carry on
Links
Official website
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

Nighty Night is a BBC Television comedy drama with a black edge to its humour. The first series was shown on BBC Three and later on BBC Two from January 2004. It returned for a second series on BBC Three in 2005. It airs in the US on the Oxygen network.

Nighty Night is written by and stars Julia Davis (formerly in Big Train, Human Remains and Jam) as Jill Tyrrell, an arch-manipulator who takes advantage of the well-meaning people around her.

The theme tune used in the beginning of both series and during the closing credits for the first is an excerpt from the spaghetti western My Name Is Nobody, composed by the Italian film composer Ennio Morricone.

In June 2006 it was announced that Sex and the City creator Darren Star will write and be executive producer of a US version, which has been commissioned for a pilot script. Steve Coogan and Henry Normal, founders of the production company Baby Cow, will be co-executive-producers.[citation needed]

Contents

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

[edit] First Series

In the first scene of the series, Jill sits in a doctor's office with her husband Terry (played by Kevin Eldon) having just been told the test results. Jill, teary-eyed and with her head in her hands, exclaims "I mean why, why me?" Her husband turns to her comfortingly, and says, "Jill. Lets keep this in perspective. It's me that's got the cancer."

Immediately after her husband begins cancer treatment, Jill goes to a computer dating agency to find another man, seemingly happy to know her husband will probably die.

Jill uses her status as cancer widow (despite Terry being still alive) to gain maximum sympathy from those who work in her suburban beauty salon, and from the quiet well-to-do couple who live across the street from her. Don (Angus Deayton of One Foot In The Grave and KYTV) is a family doctor and his wife is Cath (Rebecca Front - Brass Eye, The Day Today, Knowing Me, Knowing You), who has multiple sclerosis and often uses a wheelchair. Jill eventually moves in with Don and Cath, flirting with their son David and trying to break up their marriage and sleep with Don, all the while playing the sympathy card with Cath.

Jill occasionally visits her husband in hospital, where he is responding well to cancer treatment, in order to put her own spin on the good news from the doctors to leave Terry with the impression that he is really dying. When Jill finds out Terry has been cured, she takes him to a hospice and tells all her friends that he has died, resulting in a twisted funeral where Jill gets all the attention.

Jill dresses as Don's former mistress Sandra to try to grab his attention, and prepares a meal for him while Cath is out. Don does not know anything about this and is pleasantly surprised. Later, Jill bends down, pretends to be incapable of moving and asks for Don's help. As Don is pulling her up from the ground, Cath enters and gets the wrong impression, to Don's irritation.

Running out of excuses for the ever-curious Terry, Jill is forced to take him home. She treats him badly, but says that she is doing it only to make him better. Then she meets a rich simpleton by the name of Glen through the dating agency (he describes his personality as 'Scottish'), and she pretends to fall in love with him, though really she despises him. She announces to everyone that she and Glen are to get married right away.

Cath and Don later put forward their plans to move to Hopperton, but when Jill hears of this she throws a farewell coffee evening for them, livening it up by performing a pole dance with the locals in the house watching. The Hopperton Nuns are also at the house and are duly shocked by Jill's antics. Meanwhile Don has become extremely drunk at the coffee evening and Cath announces she has had enough and is moving to Hopperton on her own; she departs, leaving Don confused. During the party Linda sees Terry and thinks it's his ghost trying to tell her to confess all, so Linda tells Jill about her affair and is knocked down by Jill. After the party Jill goes back to her place and smothers Terry with a cushion just as a confused and tired Don enters. There Don vomits and opens a door to find Jill lying on her bed. Don, just wanting to lie down and too tired to be bothered, falls into Jill's arms on her bed.

When things start to spiral out of control and Jill realises she is about to be found out, she confesses everything to Glen at the Vicar's kitchen. She puts poison in some cups of Angel Delight and shares them with the Vicar and Glen. She encourages the Vicar to eat some and so he drops dead. She then tells Glen that if he loves her he would agree to take the blame for Terry's death. He agrees and phones up the police to confess to the murder and also the murder of the vicar. This done, Jill 'shares' the Angel Delight with Glen, making him eat some first. When it's her turn, she exclaims "I'm not really hungry".

Glen takes the blame for the Vicar and Terry's deaths, while Jill gets away to pursue Don.

[edit] Second Series

Having framed Glen for the events of Series One, Jill, still infatuated with Don, pursues him and Cath to Cornwall where they are trying to get the marriage to work at a health centre called The Trees. Jill sets off to Cornwall with Linda, her half-witted employee who has admitted to having had a fling with Terry. They accidentally run over a black woman by the name of Floella Umbagabe, who just so happens to be starting a job at the health centre. Series two, although at some points darker and more risqué than Series One, didn't achieve the same success upon first airing on BBC Three. It was widely seen as having eschewed the subtle humour of the first series in favour of more outrageous 'gross-out' set pieces in the style of Little Britain.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Critical reception

The first series won a Banff Award and Davis won a Royal Television Society Award for her performance and got a highly positive reception from TV critics. See also the IMDB's Nighty Night Awards page.

  • "An exquisitely vile comic creation [...] The Office might have popularised the comedy of embarrassment, but Nighty Night has moved it on." [1] - The Guardian
  • "a blistering wall of superbly unredeemed cruelty that manages to trample over every social convention in a pair of cheap stilettos." [2] - The Times

[edit] External links

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