BBC Writersroom: Men Behaving Badly script

We've just added a script from classic BBC comedy series Men Behaving Badly - written by Simon Nye - to our script archive.

Giving the job of the titular outlaw to Outnumbered's Daniel Roche, who basically already is William Brown in everything but name, was a stroke of casting genius. He has the perfect naughty face for hiding in bushes, firing a bow and arrow, and he just was William when he stomped around the Botts' garden with a sullen expression and a pair of fairy wings, while Violet Elizabeth commanded him to "kith me or I'll cwy".

Simon Nye's charming mini-series set the story of the middle-class Brown family and the nouveau riche Botts in the Fifties and Martin Jarvis's voiceover was as gentle as William was roughy-toughy.

One gripe. The gender politics are unbelievably retrograde. Girls are fluffy, silly, emotionally manipulative nightmares. Boys are outdoorsy, inquisitive bullies. As Outnumbered has taught us, boys and girls can be all things. And they are equally annoying.

A man watches an episode of Outnumbered, sees Daniel Roche as the ruthlessly logical, constitutionally yet unmaliciously troublesome middle child Ben and thinks: "You know, there hasn't been a decent adaptation of the Just William stories for over 30 years. Bring me that eight-year-old boy and his agent."

Just William: The Sweet Little Girl in White (BBC1) was the first adaptation by Simon Nye of four of the hundreds of stories Richmal Crompton wrote about her hero. Aimed at William's own age demographic, it was half an hour long, went out at lunchtime and delivered a quick, charming romp through an adventure that encompassed all the most important elements of the Brown universe - the Outlaws, Jumble, woodland trespass, irate gamekeepers, eventual triumph over adult adversaries and the resplendent presence of Violet Elizabeth Bott. No one, of course, who has seen Bonnie Langford's incarnation (or indeed Bonnie Langford, full stop) can ever truly expunge the memory, but Isabella Blake-Thomas's version was probably quite thrillingly terrifying enough for this mollycoddled age.

The glory of William himself is impossible wholly to capture outside the books because so much of it comes from the contrast between Crompton's high style and William's relentless atavism, but the greatest danger is that he becomes in translation simply a naughty, cocksure boy - a danger not lessened by the borderline smugness of the pathologically confident young characters in Outnumbered. Thanks to what I suspect was a concerted effort by director, cast and crew, not excepting, of course, Roche himself, this was avoided, and William did not slip into generically slappable mischief-maker but remained the belligerent idealist of legend.

Clumsiness can be very funny indeed in the right hands, but there's something about badly simulated incompetence that kills comedy like a sledgehammer to the temple. There were a couple of notable examples yesterday, first in CBBC's new version of Just William (which featured a particularly egregious example of wobbly moped riding).

Just William was a good deal more bearable, coming with the recommendation of Daniel Roche in the title role (he also played the Williamesque younger son in Outnumbered), Simon Nye writing the script and Martin Jarvis doing the voiceover narration, as if they were knowingly passing the baton from one generation of Crompton interpreters to the next. The original stories, remarkably, spanned nearly 50 years of British social history, so you can pretty much take your pick of period. Here they have opted for the Fifties, which can certainly find textual sanction in the canon, but still feels slightly wrong. The world William inhabits - of irate gamekeepers and vicars and tea-parties - is solidly anchored in the Twenties, and begins to look a little hollow and unpersuasive when updated.

That's hardly likely to worry its target audience though, which Nye clearly feels may include a few nostalgic older viewers. The script, perfectly functional when the children were talking, seemed to perk up a little when they disappeared - even finding room for an amorous little exchange between Mr and Mrs Brown. The excellent Rebecca Front plays Mrs Brown and Caroline Quentin takes the role of Mrs Bott, salient here because it was the episode in which William first encounters Violet Elizabeth Bott, a simpering confection of tulle and ringlets with the lockjaw grip of a saltwater crocodile.

For an adult the laughs didn't come from the sight of angry gamekeepers stopped in their tracks by a muddy puddle they could easily step across (more ersatz incompetence), but the sound of Mrs Bott trying to get her aitches in the right place, or the attempted recovery of Mr Brown after he's precipitously answered "yes" to her question "Do I look like a panda?" "It's our favourite of all the bears," he adds placatingly.

Incidentally, I don't know why it's assumed that children have the interpretive equivalent of myopia when it comes to facial expressions, but - with a few honourable exceptions - all the acting here is wildly over-amplified, as it all too often is in comedies for children.

William Brown truly is the boy who never grew up. Created by writer Richmal Crompton in 1922, William has remained 11 years old ever since, infuriating his teachers, embarrassing his mother, and forever trying to shake off the attentions of his spoilt brat of a neighbour, Violet Elizabeth Bott. His antics have already been adapted for television several times over.

This new treatment, written by Men Behaving Badly creator Simon Nye, opts to set the Just William stories in the Fifties - just far back enough to feel like a magical distant world to today's technology-obsessed children. William is played with gusto by Outnumbered's Daniel Roche, but it's the casting of the adults that brings the whole thing to life, especially Rebecca Front (The Thick of It) as William's permanently flustered mother, and Warren Clarke in the pantomime villain role as local condiment magnate Mr Bott (yes, his product really is called Bott Sauce). In this first episode of four to be screened over consecutive lunchtimes, the Bott family has just moved house, with Mr Bott taking a dim view of William's gang using his woods as a base. So William plots his revenge...

Just William, BBC One, preview

Sam Richards previews Simon Nye's BBC One adaptation of Richmal Crompton's popular Just William short stories.

This is the fourth time Richmal Compton's larger-than-life schoolboy has been cut down to size for the small screen (previous William Browns famously include a scabby-kneed Dennis Waterman - he could be so bad for you), and some might argue these stories actually work best on the radio, c/o the peerless readings of Martin Jarvis - who, in a best-of-both-worlds scenario, also intermittently narrates this new 1950s-set adaptation from Simon Nye, which does lack a certain fizz. Outnumbered's Daniel Roche plays the scowling scamp, tonight encountering Violet Elizabeth Bott.

Laughing Stock 2011

It's the last thing I need - new writers coming in, lots of them really young, being funny, showing us grouchy old hacks how to do it. I've got a family to feed, a fat mortgage to pay and a high maintenance dog.

Radio Review: A Cinema Near You

Simon Nye's quirky new sitcom could develop into something rather fun.

This remake has done well in the ratings and hopes for a second series must be high. For my money, Martin Clunes has carried the thing more or less single-handed, but tonight's episode is a joke-free zone. Writers Simon Nye and David Nobbs have tried to persuade us that being bored with suburban life is funny; now they want to persuade us it's tragic, too. But it's 2009, not 1974; it's a world (as Reggie observes) where choice is plentiful. So when he goes on about the pointlessness of his life, you want to slap him and tell him to resign, elope with Jasmine and go remake The Good Life instead. Instead he gets more and more frazzled. It's the night of the office party: "I'm going as existential crisis man," he quips. And that's about the best joke in the show.