Monkey Dust
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| Monkey Dust | |
 Monkey Dust Series One DVD cover: Ivan Dobsky and Mr. Hoppy in the spotlight. |
|
| Format | Animated Sketch Show |
| Run time | 29 minutes |
| Creator(s) | Harry Thompson and Shaun Pye |
| Starring | Simon Greenall Sharon Horgan Morwenna Banks Rebecca Front Frances Barber Enn Reitel Kate Robbins Shaun Pye |
| Channel | BBC Three, repeated on BBC Two |
| Production company | TalkbackTHAMES |
| Airdates | February 9, 2003 – February 8, 2005 |
| No. of episodes | 18 |
Monkey Dust is an animated TV series that satirises the darker side of life in the United Kingdom. It deals with taboo subjects and has drawn controversy for its portrayal of murderers, paedophiles and single parents. It is often described as a "darker" version of Little Britain (a more mainstream British satire, ridiculing lesser controversies such as transvestitism and homosexuality). The first episode was aired on BBC Three on February 9, 2003 and there have been three series to date – the third began airing on January 4, 2005.
Each episode features animation by several different companies including Slinky Pictures, Nexus and Picasso Pictures, but is linked by recurring themes and jokes, and by seamless transitions between sketches. The episodes are untitled but instead are known by the characters introduced or the one-off sketches included. The principal writers and creators of the series were Harry Thompson and Shaun Pye, although other contributors are responsible for a significant proportion of the work; sometimes collaborating with Thompson and/or Pye; sometimes contributing fully-formed sketches to the show. Contemporary worries about Child Protection following the Soham Murders led to a number of characters and skits being eliminated.[citation needed] A short overview of the main characters, called a nocturne, set in the various characters' bedrooms with no dialogue and a depressing accompanying song, usually precedes the final section.
The animation goes alongside contemporary music which helps the scenes to flow, with numerous songs by Goldfrapp and introduction music by Eels ("That's Not Really Funny" from Souljacker). The inclusion of music from Goldfrapp during the first series would have pre-dated the commercial release of their debut album, but production on the series took so long that by the time of airing, Goldfrapp were about to release their second album and the songs included in Monkey Dust were fairly well-known. Thompson and Pye comment on this in the Series 1 DVD commentary.
On 8 November 2004, the first series of Monkey Dust was released in the UK on DVD. Several musical substitutions had to be made from the television airing (where the BBC is allowed to play any commercial release without permission), as artists such as Cliff Richard and David Gray would not allow their work to be used on the DVD. Cover versions of the original songs were used instead.
Interestingly, only the first series of Monkey Dust was commercially released on DVD. The second and third were only broadcast on BBC Two and BBC Three respectively, and later distributed (without profit) on bittorrent sites such as UKNova. It has been speculated that due to growing controversy in Britain regarding issues such as paedophilia and terrorism (the latter particularly in wake of events such as the 7 July 2005 London bombings), people were reluctant to release it with its current '15' rating.[citation needed] A more official explanation was that it was out of respect for creator Harry Thompson's suffering through a terminal illness, although this does not explain why there are still no plans for release following his subsequent death.
[edit] Characters
The show is based on regular returning characters, along with one-time sketches.
[edit] Series one
[edit] Labia
A consultancy company which is very morally dubious opens several episodes. Initially a satire on the Royal Mail renaming itself Consignia, the company charges large amounts of money to rebrand companies and other things, e. g. renaming cancer as "Closure" and advertising it as an attractive end-of-life option. The man who invents their new brand names is an international adventurer who looks like Lord Byron. The company's offices are in the shape of their logo, just like the former NatWest Tower (Tower 42).
[edit] Liar Clive
Each episode Clive walks through the city back to his home located in a block of high rise flats. He arrives home late, and when questioned by his wife as to his previous whereabouts his excuses turn into plots of well-known fiction. Examples include Lord of the Rings, 24 (TV series), Humpty Dumpty and Hotel California by The Eagles. When his long suffering wife points out his obvious plagiarism Clive is forced to reveal his real whereabouts. This usually involves something sexually degrading such as bestiality or S&M. He is drawn with an overly-tall head, attributed to a drawing mistake. Clive's sections of the show are always prefaced by him walking home to the sound of Lovely Head by Goldfrapp. As he walks past an electronics shop there is usually clip of Prime Minister Tony Blair playing on the televisions, cut up to sound ludicrous. It is possibly an attempt to link Blair and Clive as both telling the same sort of transparent lies, although this is unconfirmed.
[edit] Ivan Dobsky
Ivan Dobsky is a supposed notorious criminal, known as "the Meat-Safe Murderer", held in custody in a high-security prison. Dobsky has the mental age of a four year old child. He also has the voice of an angel, and speaks in a soft flowing Carlisle accent. Despite his repeated protests that he "never done it" and that his confession was coerced by various methods of police torture and brutality, Dobsky was convicted for killing a typist at a meat-safe in 1974 by strangling her with a pair of ladies' pants. Dobsky bears more than a passing resemblance to the wrongly-convicted Stefan Kiszko.
Released and pardoned from H.M. Crowmarsh Prison each week due to revolutionary DNA evidence, he is a throw-back to the seventies and joyfully rides out of jail only to find the world has changed too much for him to understand, and he really preferred prison to the point he ends up murdering someone by the end of the episode in order to be reincarcerated. He'll never let "Mr Hoppy", his space hopper, leave his side. Mr. Hoppy sometimes seems to have a mind of his own, displays the occasional ability to move and change his own facial expressions and may even be the real murderer - assuming that his murderous tendencies are not, in fact, a fabrication of Dobsky's own insanity. It is never explicitly shown whether or not Ivan is homicidal until the first series ends with his mind snapping, his dismemberment of the prison staff and his ride to freedom on a horrific space hopper made from bits of their bodies (to the music of "Sunrise" by Pulp). In the last episode of series three, Mr Drummond, a prison guard, becomes insane and joins Ivan and Mr Hoppy on a murderous rampage.
Presumably reincarcerated, in the second series Ivan marries a prison visitor whom the viewer is led to assume "Mr Hoppy" then murders; the space hopper displaying ever more sinister anthropomorphic aspects. Many celebrities campaign to free Ivan from prison, including Brad Pitt (hired to play Ivan in a Hollywood movie), Bono and Nelson Mandela.
[edit] David Baddiel
The famous comedian put upon to perform numerous tasks because, as a famous comedian he is just as qualified as a trained professional. Such tasks include rescuing a child trapped underneath the wheels of a car or piloting a space shuttle.
He is played by himself, and in real life is married to Morwenna Banks who provides voices for several of the characters in the show.
[edit] Daisy Harris press conference
A bumbling police force investigating a young girl's murder appear alongside her family in a seemingly endless series of televised press conferences, but are unable to spot her step-father's obvious guilt despite the mothers accusing glare and stern expression. The step-father bares a marked resemblence to serial killer Harold Shipman, who went undetected for years before being identified and convicted. The inept police officer in charge constantly stresses that they are looking for somebody with "evil staring eyes" and they (and witnesses) overuse the word "chillingly" when describing the murder. A young local man of simple intellect is eventually charged with the murder, despite possibly suspect evidence (maybe a reference to the arrest of Barry George in the Jill Dando murder inquiry)
[edit] Divorced dad (with Timmy)
Timmy usually lives with his mother and Roger, his mother's new boyfriend. Each week Timmy comes to visit his father but always just talks about what Roger has done for him. The dad doesn't feel that he can impress him and ends up committing suicide each episode, but as he goes off to kill himself, Timmy always explains how Roger can never compare to his real dad. Roger remains an unseen character until episode 4, when Timmy shows his father a photo of him - revealing that he looks like an older version of Timmy himself, complete with ginger hair. Realising the truth, Timmy's father decides not to kill himself but to be a good father to Timmy anyway. In the last episode featuring these characters (during season two), the divorced dad is enthusiastic about a forthcoming visit from Timmy because they have not seen each other since Timmy and his mother moved to a rough area several years previously, but on discovering that a now - teenage Timmy has begun to dress, talk and act like a yob in order to fit in with the local kids, the father commits suicide for the final time out of sheer desperation. (This turns out to be Timmy just showing off, and infact longs to be how he used to with his father, alas, too late as always)
[edit] Chat room pervert
A paedophile attempts to lure children via a chat room, but fails each time, unable to successfully portray himself as a 12-year-old boy named "Benji". Failures include correcting a child's grammar, inadvertently mentioning that he was in London while it was being bombed in World War II, and trying to get a photo of the girl to whom he's been chatting, but only getting a photo of her friend "Lucy", a rabbit. When he eventually manages to arrange a meeting with one of his online friends known as "Charlotte", the "child" turns out to be another elderly chat room paedophile.
[edit] The Clubbers
A group of pseudo-intellectuals make increasingly pretentious statements about art, culture and life in general while waving their arms around earnestly, i.e "The nineties were to the eighties what the seventies were to the sixties" or "Serial killers are just rock stars without guitars". They are shown waiting in line outside of a club, restaurant, or church. In one episode they are waiting outside one of their mother's house. Each time, they are turned away when they get to the front of the line due to a "No Wankers" policy.
One of 'The Clubbers' is referred to in the script notes by the moniker 'Scotch twat'.
[edit] Geoff the first-time cottager
Geoff is a wimpy bespectacled office worker who constantly tries to pluck up the courage to fellate strange men in toilets or parks, but is always thwarted somehow, and when he finally succeeds, he finds that he doesn't really like it. In one scene, Geoff attends an evening class in cottaging for beginners at his local college, in which he enters the classroom proudly announcing to the class that he wants to be a cottager, only to be told that the class is for Bengali literature. When Geoff visits Rio de Janeiro for the Carnival, he attempts to perform fellatio on a man dressed as a traffic policeman. The man tells him in Portuguese that he really is a traffic cop (Geoff looks through his phrasebook) and beats him savagely.
[edit] The yuppies
A group of middle class friends who are constantly holding very dull dinner parties, until a bizarre or out of the ordinary event happens to liven it up (eg. in one episode a guest suddenly suggests playing Russian roulette and in the next scene one of the guests has been shot in the head; in another a couple are talking about how they had children via IVF using eggs and sperm donated by athletes and geniuses, at which point the children come downstairs and blow their parents' heads off with telekinesis, an homage to film Village of the Damned).
[edit] Sven-Göran Eriksson
A television shows a stock crowd scene from history or nature, for example, a herd of stampeding wildebeest, and a voice-over says 'And of course, no surprise to see England manager Sven-Göran Eriksson in the crowd'; a reference to his ubiquitous appearances at football matches throughout England at the time.
[edit] The classically-trained actor
A man who constantly speaks in the emotionless, non-committal style of a TV voice-over, including during sex, in the crowd at a football match, drunkenly admonishing other customers in a pub, when crying during a speech at a friend's funeral and other times when it is normal to talk in an emotional manner. Everyone else who hears him, especially his wife, notice nothing wrong in his speech. Whenever slighted, he notes that he is a classically-trained actor but he can only ever get television voice-over work.
[edit] Theme pub
A man walks into his local which although he is the only patron has on each occasion been transformed by orders of "the brewery". Themes include Crack House and S&M bar. On one occasion, he enters the pub to be told by a barman named Keith, in an absurd leprechaun outfit that it is now an "Oirish pub". When he asks what happened to the previous barman, who was Irish, he is told that he wasn't "Oirish" enough.
[edit] Kelly, work experience girl
A very dim teenage girl with no understanding of office work, she says "I'm Kelly, I'm on work experience" whenever approached. She is totally inept: if you ask her to file some papers, she might photocopy a kettle or staple a mousemat to her foot.
[edit] Series two
[edit] Movie Parodies
Several movie parodies are featured through the various series. These typically satirise big-budget Hollywood, particularly:
- The tendency towards wildly inaccurate 'historical' films, such as U-571 or The Patriot.
- The tendency to 'Americanise' particularly British heroes/stories, such as Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
- The fact that British actors often get cast as the bad guy - e.g. Alan Rickman in Die Hard and Patrick Stewart in Conspiracy Theory.
Examples include:
- The Diary of Anne Frank. Anne's merry band of Irish 'Jews' is brutally captured and terrified by the English-accented Nazi soldiers of the British Reich (pronounced 'reesh'). They are rescued by Anne's GI boyfriend, Johnny, who bursts in and skewers Hitler with a US flag, a "present from President Churchill".
- The Crusades (a Jerry Bruckhammer production). A bunch of American accented crusaders (featuring Brad Pitt as Jablonski/Jablondeski?) train to join the 42nd Horsebourne. Sample line - "Say-laddin, you English bastard!". Ending line - "In honour of all the Americans who died in the early middle ages."
- They All Come Back. An American Special Forces unit, "The Laser Rangers," save a pilot who has crashed behind "enemy" lines - in Freeville, the capital of Bongostan - in an overly aggressive manner. Despite the fact that the locals are clearly friendly, and even offer to repair the Rangers' broken helicopter, they torture a woman to make her tell them where the airport is, even though it is right behind them and she is freely offering the information already.
[edit] Jon Swoon
TV presenter/lawyer who tries to have Ivan Dobsky released from prison. He ends up murdered by Dobsky's security robotic arm. Hosts a programme called Beyond Reasonable Doubt and sets about proving that Dobsky couldn't possibly have committed the Meatsafe murders, due to the length of time it would have taken him to travel across town by spacehopper. The character appears to be a satire of channel 4 newsreader Jon Snow.
[edit] Omar, Abdul and Shafiq, the useless terrorists
Omar is a fanatical Islamist and a member of a terrorist organization he calls 'The International Revolutionary Jihad for the Liberation of the Islamic Republic of Great Britain'. His cell is based in West Bromwich in the West Midlands in the UK and is bent on "unleashing a reign of terror the like of which the world has only dreamed about in its foulest nightmares." Omar has recruited two teenage boys, Abdul and Shafiq, to carry out suicide bombings in the name of Allah, but through various comical misadventures, their plans always fail.
The effectiveness of their terror campaign is somewhat undermined by the fact that they seem to take their jihad for granted and treat it with the same offhandedness as the mundane details of their daily lives such as sport and television.
Omar is the privileged son of a wealthy family and a public schoolboy (he attended Charterhouse, but failed to get into Oxford or Cambridge and had to settle for Bristol). His vehement rhetoric calls for the swift and merciless destruction of the infidel, however he is careful to leave all the dangerous aspects of their activities to the two boys and keep himself out of harm's way as much as possible.
Abdul and Shafiq are thoroughly typical English youths in nearly every way. They are avid supporters of West Bromwich Albion F.C., spend a great deal of time watching mindless pop-entertainment television programmes such as Stars in Their Eyes and Pop Idol, and eat processed junk foods, i.e Bernard Matthews' turkey drumsticks with barbeque beans, or Findus' crispy pancakes. Their plotting often takes place in Shafiq's home where Shafiq's mother, Mrs. Khan, brings them drinks and snacks and seems untroubled by what they're up to: "You can leave your Jihad til after dinner!"
In the conclusion of Series 3, the Omar sends Abdul and Shafiq to Iraq, while staying in the UK himself because "he couldn't change his dental appointment" but goes down the pub instead. The boys complain that terrorist training is "worse than PE". They meet a friend and fellow West Bromwich fan among the British soldiers who detain them before being captured and imprisoned in Abu Ghraib by American troops ("This is the best holiday I've ever had!").
It's possible the inspiration for this depiction of radical Islamicist ideology in the midst of otherwise normal modern British life comes from the detention of the so-called Tipton Three at Camp X-Ray. In Monkey Dust's sketches, Omar the ringleader is said to come from Tipton, where the jihad is taken "dead serious".
[edit] Abu the illegal immigrant
An illegal immigrant who is never able to see the bad side of living in Britain, and remains eternally optimistic however dire his situation becomes. He often writes gushing letters to his family in India about how wonderful his new life in Britain is (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary), and even chooses a strip club as the ideal place to look for a girlfriend.
[edit] Essex man and London man
Two large, bald, essentially identical, men discuss the relative merits of Essex and London, usually on a topical theme (ie. where the next James Bond should come from). This usually escalates to them yelling "ESSEX!" and "LONDON!" at each other. This references the way that, to the rest of the country, Essex and London are considered merely as contiguous parts of a whole.
[edit] "Your hair looks nice"
Girlfriend is having her hair done. Boyfriend tries to remember to compliment her on her new style, but is always distracted by some extraordinary event, such as an alien invasion, the arrival of James Bond or even the Second Coming of Jesus. By the time Girlfriend arrives, all evidence of the strange event has disappeared, and Girlfriend thinks the speechless Boyfriend just doesn't care.
[edit] The Paedofinder General
Inspired by the film Witchfinder General. An ominous character who executes alleged paedophiles on dubious evidence, e.g. a quiz show host seeking the correct answer of "P.D. James", a public swimming pool attendant whose Speedo trunks are mis-read as "Peedo," and the cast of a production of Fiddler On The Roof because he thinks it is Kiddie Fiddler On The Roof. When executing suspected paedophiles, he will cite justification with the likes of, "by the power invested in me by a text vote on Sky News" or "by prurient wishful thinking... I proclaim you guilty of paedophilia!" He admits to looking at online child pornography himself, but claims that it's "for research" (a reference to the excuse used by Pete Townshend when caught with child pornography on his computer). He appeared in a few skits in the first episode of season two and returned as a regular character in season three. Much of the humour is based on both the endemic waves of moral panic about paedophilia, and the profound stupidity of the Paedofinder General himself. In the third season, the Paedofinder General has a musical number, along with some of his cohorts.
[edit] Mail order bride man
A grotesquely fat middle-aged man with a quiff, sideburns, poor personal hygiene and a penchant for Andy McNab books and REO Speedwagon, greets his Thai mail order bride who turns out to be beautiful, intelligent, adoring of him and completely impervious to his disgusting lifestyle. Each episode, when he demands sex and she refuses because she wants their love to grow stronger by waiting, he kicks her out. A similar version of this sketch also appeared in season three of Little Britain.
[edit] Nazi grandfather
An apparently kindly and elderly man who is a former high ranking member of the Nazi party and was almost certainly active in their numerous war crimes. He has an unfortunate tendency to attend a formal occasion such as a wedding or court hearing, but finds he has nothing left to wear except his Nazi coat with a swastika armband, inevitably leading to trouble (for example at a wedding or a court case). On one occasion he is admitted into a nursing home, but has to leave when the other elderly people realise he is Der Weiße Engel - a reference to a scene in the movie Marathon Man.
[edit] Relationship-seeking girl
A girl looking for love walks over to a man in a nightclub and starts dreaming of the future. She imagines a number of bleak events (man cheating on her, man dressing up in her clothes, man flopping in bed) and storms off within seconds, usually after throwing a drink over him or slapping him in the face, before being comforted by her friends.
[edit] Series three
[edit] Fran Chappell
An ordinary mother who uses her daughter's disappearance as the springboard to launch a showbiz career. When the girl comes back Fran is caught up in her career and pays her £100 to leave again.
[edit] Noodles
Probably inspired by Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Noodles is a laboratory rabbit who can survive all manner of horrific medical experiments because he is only a toon. In the final episode he turns the tables on the researchers by dropping an anvil on their heads in true cartoon fashion. Only of course for the human doctor, this is fatal.
[edit] Broody woman
A woman in denial that she wants a child despite evidence to the contrary, such as dressing kittens in baby clothes and pushing them around in a pram.
[edit] Prime Minister
A caricature of Tony Blair who makes a speech in front of the American flag, making ludicrous promises such as "Magic beans for every family" as well as more satirical ones ("Post to be delivered on time").
[edit] Saint Stephen's Hospital
A very badly run hospital highlighting all the main criticisms about the British National Health Service. Its many problems include a "superbug" that can be seen visibly travelling along the corridors, patients transported in a supermarket trolley, ants invading, organs stolen from recently deceased patients, and an ultrasound scan of a pregnant woman that reveals that her baby is spraying graffiti in the womb.
[edit] Mr and Mrs Daily Mail
A husband and wife are constantly interrupted by the noise of 'kids from the flats', who are performing such absurd acts as disproving the theory of gravity, and coaxing Vin Diesel to fight a bear.
[edit] Awards
- 2003: International Student Jury Award (Banff Rockies Awards)
- 2004: Best Multichannel Programme (Broadcast Awards)
- 2004: Best Comedy (British Animation Awards)
[edit] Quotations
"By the power invested in me by that bloke I met in the pub - who said he knew for definite - I now pronounce you...a paedophile" — Paedo-Finder General
"99?! That's like 69 but thirty worse!"— Paedo-Finder General
"All gays are paedophiles. It is written in stone. On the wall behind the bus shelter, I carved it there myself!"— Paedo-Finder General
"I never done it! I only said I done it so they'd take the rat out of my anus!" — Ivan Dobsky
(Ivan has just received a letter for the first time in his life) Ivan: "Who's it from?" Prison guard: "Well, judging by the perfume and the feminine hand, I'd say it's from a certified lunatic." Ivan: "Yippee!" — Ivan Dobsky
"Karen Carpenter, she's my favourite! I bet she's old and fat now."— Ivan Dobsky
"I'd like two tickets to see Mud at Wembley Stadium please" Ivan Dobsy
"Hello, I'm the Meatsafe Murderer, only I never done it see, and two nice men called D and A know I didn't do it and they told everyone. Can I have a quarter of a pound of cola cubes?"— Ivan Dobsky
"... and that, darling, is what really happened"— Liar Clive
"I CAN suck off a complete stranger in a public toilet!"— Heard on a motivational self-hypnosis tape that Geoff the first time cottager listens to
"As a famous comedian, I resent the implication that I'm any less qualified to perform this task than a fully trained professional!"— David Baddiel
"Now is the time to be strong in our resolve. It must be - Del Boy" — The useless terrorists discuss who to vote for in a poll of favourite TV characters, as MI5 spies listen in from outside
"Is that our Shafiq at the terrorist training camp? Tell him to tidy his bunk and thank them for having him." — Mrs Khan
[edit] Trivia
- The font used for the Monkey Dust logo is Shatterboxx.
- The theme tune to the show is "That's Not Really Funny" by Eels from their Souljacker album.
