Out of Tune
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Out of Tune was a children's TV sitcom which was shown on CBBC from 1996 to 1998.
It featured a group of children that belonged to a church choir and their practice sessions. However the choir were humourously bad, hence the name 'Out of Tune' and the practice sessions were often interrupted by one thing or another. The show aired at 4:35 on BBC One on Tuesday and Wednesday and had it total 40 episodes from three series. The first series started on 14 February 1996 and finished on 4 June later that year. The last episode was aired on 9 June 1998.
A children's sitcom focusing on the motley bunch who comprise a church choir in a sleepy English village. The place doesn't have much going for it by way of excitement, apart from occasional activities at the village hall, so the best place for the local youngsters to meet, mingle, gossip and romantically liaise is at choir practice, hence the meetings are well attended. Few of the number are there because they possess a good voice, though, which means that the choir is bad - very, very bad - the combination of the youngsters' vocal 'talents' resulting in a sound that is pitched somewhere between a strangled cat and the mating call of a bull elephant. The patient vicar tries his best to improve them, but to no avail.
The central characters within the choir are Street, a rakish boy slightly older than the others; the bossy Chas, who leads the girls and is (initially) the object of Street's passion; Ice D, a streetwise, village newcomer from an urban environment; and Frankie, an aspiring wheeler-dealer whose uncle can get hold of anything, 'no questions asked'. The (jokey) villain of the piece was caretaker Tony Sweet who fulfilled a similar function within the sitcom to that of ARP Warden Hodges in Dad's Army In the third series Sweet is elevated to parish treasurer and ex-choir boy Street becomes the new caretaker, torn between his duties and loyalty for his old friends.
All told, Out Of Tune was a competent comedy that occasionally hit the right note, with fair acting from the young cast and some shameless hamming from the older members. Enjoyable but untaxing. [1]
[edit] Cast
- Tim Downie - Street
- Jotham Annan - Ice D
- Louise Sullivan - Sheri
- Thomas Maher - Mickey
- John Waterhouse - Frankie
- Nick Maloney - Rev Worthington
- John Labanowski - Tony Sweet
- Jonathan Praeger - James
- Lianne Islin - Rachel
- Jane Danson - Chas (series 1)
- Charlene Brooks - Carol (series 1)
- Tonatha Davis - Natalie (series 2 & 3)
- Rebecca Clarke - Midge (series 2 & 3)
- Joe Murphy - Lenny (series 2 & 3)
