Who Dares Wins (TV series)

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For the Australian game show, see Who Dares Wins (game show). For the UK game show, see Who Dares Wins (UK game show).

Who Dares Wins was a British television comedy sketch show broadcast between 1983 and 1988, featuring Jimmy Mulville, Rory McGrath, Philip Pope, Julia Hills and Tony Robinson. It was one of the first TV outlets for alternative comedy and was broadcast by Channel 4 late at night in a first attempt at "Post-Pub television"[citation needed]. The opening title sequence shows a man staggering home from the pub to get to the television in time for the programme. It was filmed on a soundstage in front of an audience.

The show's title is also the motto of the British Special Air Service regiment (see Who Dares Wins), whose badge featured in the title sequence, and was often supplemented by a subtitle, e.g., "a week in Benidorm".

Mulville, McGrath and Pope had all contributed material to Not the Nine O'Clock News. Other script material was provided by Not the Nine O'Clock News regulars Colin Bostock-Smith and Andy Hamilton. The series established Mulville's Hat Trick Productions as a producer of comedy material for Channel 4.

The program sometimes satirised current events but the mainstay was simple observational comedy and frequently employed base humour (for example, the tracking camera shot in the title sequence showed a drunk who had urinated in his trousers).

The show pioneered a sketch style involving a roaming camera - the camera would move from character to character as they delivered their lines.

Notable sketches included:

  • Philip Pope singing a Barry Manilow-style song, initially praising a lost love, but realising how horrible she was and changing his lyrics accordingly;
  • Tony Robinson appearing in a sketch as the emperor (as in The Emperor's New Clothes), and appearing on stage totally naked. And then hanging around in following sketches, still naked, seemingly not knowing what to do with himself;
  • A parody of Channel 4's "red triangle" series of films, which showed explicit content (usually foreign films), in which an Eskimo film is shown complete with explicit nose kissing and nose masturbation.

The show was produced by Hat Trick Productions for Channel 4 Television.