End Of Part One – The Complete Series

This was the first TV series from multi-award-winning screenwriter team Marshall and Renwick - an anarchic and surreal assault exploding with media parodies, deranged slapstick and political lampoon!

The satirical soap opera/sketch show originally ran on ITV from 1979 to 1980, and was an attempt at a TV version of the BBC Radio 4 comedy series The Burkiss Way.

Now, End Of Part One – The Complete Series, is - for the very first time - available on DVD, complete and uncut.

SERIES ONE centres on middle-aged couple Vera and Norman Straightman. Their efforts to live a quiet life are forever interrupted by ‘guests’ from the world of television and other assorted oddballs. In one sketch, Vera calls for Sherlock Holmes after she lost Norman, but Holmes is clueless and hopes that Watson might be able to solve the case – hence, he swaps his famous outfit with that of Watson’s.
In another sketch, Vera and Norman enter a burger bar, only to be served by someone who looks like a character from a Shakespeare play, while the three witches operate in the kitchen. At the start of every new sketch, the title music from Coronation Street gets played, followed by the End Of Part One logo.

Particularly amusing is a sketch in which both Vera and Norman sit in their ‘decade-that-taste-forgot’ living room… Increasingly frustrated, she tries to throw some hints that it’s their wedding anniversary, but he’s all but forgotten about it. When Vera produces a document (obviously the wedding certificate), Norman remarks: “Oh, now I remember… It’s George Washington’s birthday today! I’ll send him a card.” In the next attempt, Vera digs out her crumpled bridal veil from an old dusty drawer, in the hope that this will shake up Norman’s memory. Looking at her once again, he remarks: “But of course, how COULD I possibly forget! It’s been 15 years since you last washed the net curtains in this house!”
And so it goes on, in the same barmy fashion. Nothing makes much sense, but underneath the seemingly surreal micro-plots simmer attacks against conformity, stereotypes, prejudice, class divide, and the politics of Maggie Thatcher.

SERIES TWO holds a combination of sketches that prefigured the Not The Nine O’ Clock News. Once again, various characters (like criminal mastermind ‘Kneecaps’) keep turning up throughout the series; we see Valkyries riding through London and kidnapping Vera on horseback; and a great deal of fun is poked at the appallingly poor television programs broadcast by sender East Anglia.

End Of Part One is obviously a product of its time. While most of the lampooned topics hold no longer any relevance nowadays, other aspects are timeless. Anyone who’s a fan of Monty Python’s Flying Circus or Michael Palin’s Ripping Yarns will get plenty of laughs out of this madcap show!