Enduring the lobotomized American version of 'The Young Ones'

The not-so-great pretenders: Jackie Earle Haley, Nigel Planer, and Robert Bundy.

It's no secret that numerous popular American sitcoms are actually based on successful British shows. If a format worked over there, it could work over here just as easily. Thus, Steptoe and Son (1962-1974) begat Sanford and Son (1972-1977), Man About the House (1973-1976) begat Three's Company (1976-1984), and The Office (2001-2003) begat... well, The Office (2005-2013). But for every success, there are plenty of failures, some of them quite malodorous. And flops don't get any more rank than Oh No, Not Them! (1989), Fox's aborted attempt to remake The Young Ones (1982-1984).

A UK classic, best left alone.

The original UK series, which debuted on BBC2 on November 9, 1982, concerns a quartet of college students living in a filthy, dilapidated rental house in London. Our main characters include pretentious poser Rick (Rik Mayall), anarchic punk rocker Vyv (Ade Edmondson), sad-sack hippie Neil (Nigel Planer), and smooth-talking ladies' man Mike (Christopher Rich). Since these lads rarely if ever attend classes or study, they have plenty of time to do strange, pointless, and revolting things. Rounding out the cast is satirist Alexei Sayle, who torments the boys in a variety of guises, including their pernicious, scheming landlord Jerzei Balowski.

The world depicted in this show is a bizarre, nightmarish one in which nearly anything can happen at any time. The thin "plot" of any given episode is likely to be interrupted by surreal vignettes and cutaway gags. The Young Ones breathlessly juxtaposes elements of situation comedy, sketch comedy, and pure absurdism. Only twelve half-hour episodes were made, but those twelve episodes contain a wealth of material. The only American show I can really compare it to is Aqua Teen Hunger Force. On both Aqua Teen and The Young Ones, the main characters are perfectly capable of creating chaos on their own, but if they don't, strange characters will simply materialize at their doorstep without warning and start causing havoc almost immediately. Tranquility is never an option in the characters' lives.

Despite the extreme Britishness of The Young Ones, including countless references to pop singer Cliff Richard (whose popularity did not cross the pond), the show was a sizable hit when it was rebroadcast on MTV in 1985. Because the show featured onscreen performances by bands like Madness and Motorhead, it fit in quite nicely with the cable network's other music-based programming. Actor Nigel Planer even came over to reprise his sympathetic, Eeyore-like Neil Pye character on the cable network. I certainly have fond memories of watching classic Young Ones episodes like "Sick," "Nasty," and "Bambi" over and over. Was this my introduction to British comedy? Possibly.

As you have probably already guessed by now, the popularity of The Young Ones did not escape the attention of American television executives. In 1989, the fledgling Fox Network commissioned a remake called Oh No, Not Them! As hacky and embarrassing as that title sounds, there was a (remote) possibility for this thing to be watchable, maybe even halfway good. Fox was looking for a way to distinguish itself from its competitors, and this show could have been a way to do it.

Simpsons great David Mirkin.

The pilot was written and directed by comedy legend David Mirkin, best known for co-creating Get a Life (1990-1992) and for being the showrunner on The Simpsons (1989- ) for two seasons during that show's classic era. Another encouraging sign was that Nigel Planer was hired to reprise his beloved Neil Pye character from the original show. The American version ditched the familiar Young Ones theme song ("Once in every lifetime...") but replaced it with a newly-composed instrumental theme by Danny Elfman. The show's eye-popping Claymation title sequence was created by Ric Heitzman and John Lindauer, both of whom had worked on Pee-wee's Playhouse (1986-1990). And well-regarded character actor Jackie Earle Haley was recruited to play Rip, the American equivalent of Vyv.

All good signs, right? Not so fast.

Unfortunately, any hope you might have for this project evaporates when you watch the pilot. For years, this was lost media, and it probably should have stayed lost. Forever. Supposedly, Oh No, Not Them! tested so poorly that Fox didn't even bother to air it once. That's plausible. This thing is dire—a castrated, lobotomized, and sanitized clone of the original. Nearly every wrong decision that could have been made was made, including the design of the sets and costumes. David Mirkin seems to have no understanding whatsoever of what made The Young Ones successful. Or perhaps he dumbed the show down and sweetened it up in order to please the bosses at Fox. The pilot reeks of compromise and desperation.

The setup of Oh No, Not Them! is the same as that of The Young Ones: a group of college students live in a rented house and get into wacky hijinks. But the quartet has been reduced to a trio, possibly for budgetary reasons. In addition to the aforementioned Neil and Rip, we have Todd (Robert Bundy), a snobbish, rather nattily-dressed wimp. I suppose he's meant to be a combination of Mike and Rik. Fans of The Young Ones have observed that the four students form a surrogate family: Mike as the father, Neil as the mother, Vyv as the son, and Rick as the daughter. Oh No, Not Them! dispenses with this quasi-familial relationship between the housemates and turns them into interchangeable sitcom dufuses. Since this is a late 1980s Fox show, a couple of attractive female neighbors (played by Shari Shattuck and Kristi Somers) have been added to the cast. They don't do or say anything remotely humorous, but the script finds a way to show them in their underwear for a few seconds.

The pilot finds the three housemates short on both cash and food. The situation is desperate enough that they're considering cannibalism. To make things worse, Neil has foolishly given their address to a dangerous criminal (Donald Gibb aka Ogre from 1984's Revenge of the Nerds) after mistaking him for an old lady in need of help. They're worried that he could show up at their house at any time to kill them, so they decide to arm themselves to the teeth. Predictably, they end up shooting at each other and their neighbors. Meanwhile, those sexy neighbors want Rip, Neil and Todd to clean their house for some reason. None of this leads to anything of interest.

It's difficult to convey what a comedic dead zone Oh No, Not Them! is. Of the three main actors, only Nigel Planer seems comfortable here, slipping back into the gloomy Neil Pye character he'd been playing for years. Jackie Earle Haley and Robert Bundy are adrift. The script gives them nothing to work with, apart from lame one-liners and badly conceived sight gags. Some jokes are taken directly from the original series, such as Neil suddenly sprouting multiple arms or a nuclear bomb appearing in the living room, but they do not work in this context. This is a prime time network sitcom in 1989, so the script has largely been scrubbed clean of social satire, transgressive humor, or anything that might offend anyone. What good is a defanged Young Ones?

Well, I can think of one use for this pilot. This is complicated, but hear me out.

The Young Ones features many sharply-observed media parodies. The episode "Nasty," for instance, is shot like a faux horror film. "Time" takes on prime time soap operas like Dallas (1978-1991) and Dynasty (1981-1989). And the most famous Young Ones episode of all, "Bambi," has the four housemates competing on the game show University Challenge (1962- ). Oh No, Not Them! plays less like a real sitcom and more like a self-aware spoof of a bad sitcom, the kind of dreadful program the characters on the UK show might find themselves watching someday. I can easily imagine a Young Ones episode in which the famous foursome find out that their lives have been used as the basis for a terrible American comedy. Vyv would insist on tracking down the actors and killing them. Neil would then be amazed to find out that his American equivalent is himself. "Heavy," he might observe.

If you're brave enough to risk it, Oh No, Not Them! can be seen here. It's an unrewarding viewing experience, but it serves as a warning to all those who seek to remake or reboot the classics. Meanwhile, if you want the American equivalent of The Young Ones, just watch some Aqua Teen episodes.