Drop the Dead Donkey

Drop the Dead Donkey
Format Satirical sitcom
Created by Andy Hamilton
Guy Jenkin
Written by Andy Hamilton
Guy Jenkin
Nick Revell
Malcolm Williamson
Ian Brown
Starring Robert Duncan
Jeff Rawle
Haydn Gwynne (Series 1–2)
Ingrid Lacey (Series 3–6)
David Swift
Victoria Wicks
Stephen Tompkinson
Neil Pearson
Susannah Doyle (Series 2–6)
Country of origin United Kingdom
No. of series 6
No. of episodes 65 (List of episodes)
Production
Producer(s) Hat Trick Productions
Running time 24 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel Channel 4
Original run 9 August 1990 (1990-08-09) – 9 December 1998 (1998-12-09)

Drop the Dead Donkey is a situation comedy that ran on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom from 1990 to 1998. It was set in the offices of “GlobeLink News”, a fictional TV news company. Recorded close to transmission, it made use of current news events as a means of giving the programme a greater sense of realism. It was created by Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin. The series had an ensemble cast, making stars of Haydn Gwynne, Stephen Tompkinson and Neil Pearson.

The series began with the acquisition of GlobeLink by media mogul Sir Roysten Merchant, whose name is probably a reference to Rupert Murdoch, or perhaps Robert Maxwell, who was still alive when the series started. Indeed, Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin note on their DVDs that it was fortunate for their libel lawyers that the two men shared the same initials. The series is mostly based on the on-going battle between the staff of GlobeLink, led by editor George Dent, as they try to maintain the company as a serious news organisation, and Sir Roysten’s right-hand man Gus Hedges, trying to make the show more sensationalist and suppress stories that might harm Sir Roysten’s business empire.

Contents

Title

The originality of the title attracted speculation as to its origins. The working title was Dead Belgians Don’t Count which was replaced by Drop the Dead Donkey:

Finally, the title ‘Drop the Dead Donkey’ has been the subject of many column inches. Various journalists have with great authority explained its provenance as a well-known industry expression. The truth, sadly, is that the writers made it up. It’s just something stupid that they imagined might be shouted out in the tense few minutes before a news broadcast.

—Andy Hamilton & Guy Jenkin , Drop the Dead Donkey—The Writers’ Choice

Characters

Major characters

Minor characters

Scripting

Unusually for a sitcom, the show was topical, and was usually written and filmed in the week before broadcast. The writers commented that this made for a very natural style of acting. In most offices people normally converse while looking at monitors, clipboards or newspaper crosswords; the cast of the show reproduced this while actually cribbing their lines. Typically, the last scene was filmed either the day before or sometimes on the day of broadcast, and episodes concluded with audio-only dialogue or (in later seasons) an additional scene during the credits, which would usually involve topical references. The most frantic rewrite is said to have occurred when, on the day of filming, British media mogul Robert Maxwell drowned. (As the writers said in a later episode, “We don’t want to go overboard with the story.”) A number of politicians including Neil Kinnock and Ken Livingstone made guest appearances.

The humour, like that in a real newsroom, was often very black, as the writers did not shy away from sensitive subjects. A typical line (from Henry): “The ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland. What a bloody stupid phrase. What do they think two thousand people have died from? Stress?” The view of relationships in the programme is also very bleak: all the main characters have very unstable romantic lives, with no-one being happily married.

The series ended with GlobeLink being closed down, with Series 6 being spent with the main characters trying to plan their futures elsewhere (largely unsuccessfully). The format for the final series differed slightly from the previous five. As well as being shorter (seven episodes), far less emphasis was placed on the news than before (both in terms of topical references and stories covered in the newsroom). Instead, much of the focus was on where the main characters would be once GlobeLink closed, after an announcement in the second episode of the series. Several minor characters appeared over the course of a few episodes in the final series, whereas most previously had only been in single episodes.

The ending contradicted the already thoroughly contradicted novel Drop The Dead Donkey 2000 by Hamilton and Alistair Beaton (1994) ISBN 0-316-91236-0, in which the company is almost destroyed in a bomb blast at the turn of the millennium.

Repeats

Reruns of the programme often appear on Comedy Central Extra. Before the show starts, there is often a short review of the major news events which happened during the week of each episode’s filming. Episodes on DVD compilations are introduced in the same way (although not for Series 6 when topical references were very limited).

Channel 4 now has a Video on Demand service, where episodes can either be downloaded from the Internet and watched on computers or watched on cable TV.

See also

References

External links