Network Month of Comedy: Kit Curran
Kit Curran - king of the airwaves!
British Comedy Guide and Network's Month of Comedy continues, and this week we're looking back to the fondly-remembered 1984 sitcom The Kit Curran Radio Show.
Comedies about schemers and chancers would seem, offhand, to be ten a penny. However, this particular two-series outing from the future writers of Drop The Dead Donkey offered a little spark of 1980s entrepreneurial anarchy.
Created by Andy Hamilton (Trevor's World Of Sport, Shelley, Old Harry's Game), the Thames comedy began its ITV run focusing on Denis Lawson's titular Kit Curran, an egocentric, scheming DJ at the provincial Radio Newtown.
Forever dreaming of the big time and his own potential super-stardom, he is joined by his overweight producer, Les Toms (never seen without a snack on the go), and sometime-friend, sometime-adversary Damien Appleby, the station's acerbic, short-tempered newsreader.
But the trio find their real adversary in the form of Radio Newtown's new manager, Roland Simpson (Porridge star Brian Wilde), with whom they immediately clash, and who seems both immediately wise - and equally unamused by - Kit's endless plots to his own fame and fortune.
The second series saw Hamilton writing with his regular collaborator and later Drop The Dead Donkey and Outnumbered co-creator Guy Jenkin on a further six episodes. Following just over 2 years since the airing of Series 1, and moving from ITV to Channel 4, it was renamed simply Kit Curran and positions the trio in Brentford, west London, following the collapse of Radio Newtown. (Someone, it seems, ran an unfunded £500,000 jackpot bingo game, which no fewer than 5 listeners won...)
Renting a grubby hovel of an office space, Kit ropes in Les and Damien to his scheming once more and sets about establishing a brand new business empire offering any service they can think of - after all, diversification is key! But not forgetting the establishment of sole-DJ station Radio Kit...
The show's memorable theme tune, Ultra Fantastico, was composed by David Mackay and performed by Lawson, with lyrics written by The Likely Lads and Porridge co-writer Ian La Frenais. Although released as a single alongside the first series broadcasts, it failed to chart.
The Kit Curran Radio Show - The Complete Series is available to own on DVD from Monday 10th September 2018.
The Kit Curran Radio Show - The Complete Series
Disc jockey, flyboy, con-man, compulsive fibber... Kit Curran is all of these - and worse! A perfect storm of self-obsession and general apathy, Kit reigns as the undisputed king of small-time Radio Newtown; but sparks start to fly when a new boss arrives - and Kit finds that his days of egocentric scheming may soon be numbered!
A creative force in comedy for four decades, BAFTA-winning writer/director/novelist/comedian Andy Hamilton has scored numerous successes in television, radio and film in shows such as Drop The Dead Donkey, Shelley, Old Harry's Game and What We Did On Our Holiday. Following his work on Shelley and Alas Smith & Jones in the early 1980s, Hamilton crafted one of television all-time-great "likeable rogue" characters in Kit Curran - an inventively delusional narcissist, played to perfection by BAFTA-nominee Denis Lawson.
This set contains all twelve episodes from both series.
First released: Monday 10th September 2018
- Distributor: Network
- Region: 2
- Discs: 2
- Minutes: 300
- Catalogue: 7954930
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