" Joke!" " Joke." "Right." "OK..." " Er..." "Knock, knock." " Who's there?" "Open the door." "(NARRATOR) In the early '80s, if there was no alternative to Margaret Thatcher's politics, there was an alternative in comedy." "Alternative comedians were as bored with the status quo in comedy as they were with Status Quo in the pop charts." "The cosy sitcom living room was about to be vandalized." "(TV) Just open the plopping door!" "Oh, no!" "The front door's exploded!" "A lot of the charm and attraction of "The Young Ones" was its... not its shockingness, but its power to surprise and excite, because you didn't know what would happen next." "Anything could happen." "It took all those sitcom rules and premises, which had been carefully built up and crafted, and used them for its own purposes, which was to invert and subvert them." "This is actually very serious." "The wave on the crest of which they rode was the arrival of the punk ethic into comedy." "That was not reflected on television, that humor that was couched in that excitement and madness." "The humour of destruction, the violence, was only there in things like Tom  Jerry." "(SCREECHES HYSTERICALLY)" "It's funny, but being ill makes me lose my usual tolerant and easy-going approach to communal living." "One of the things people said about "The Young Ones" before it went out, and there was a debate whether it ever could go out or not, was," ""You've broken a basic sitcom rule - none of these people are likeable."" "Surprise!" " What' a hippie worth?" "Six?" " Six?" "It would be six if you'd killed him." " Let's say two." " Fair enough." " I don't want to play." " Rick, shut up." "We took our frames of reference from what we knew, so, suddenly, they were talking about the political naiveties and pomposities of students and youth." "I, as a young person, was terribly serious at times about my politics, and I found that great fun to put that into Rick." ""I'm a rider at the gates of dawn, I take no prisoners." "Take that, Thatch!"" "Neil, the bathroom's free, unlike the country under the Thatcherite junta." "Neil, are these lentils South African?" " Well, er..." " You bastard!" "You complete and utter bastard!" "Why don't you just become a policeman, a pig?" "I'm going to write to my M.P." "But you haven't got an M.P. Rick, you're an anarchist." "Then, I'll write to the lead singer of Echo and the Bunnymen." "In the '70s, you'd have to be there at 7.30, then everybody would talk about it the next day." "Totally different thing." " Oh!" "Have we got a video?" " Yes, we've got a video!" ""The Young Ones" was different, that was the first one that we taped." "We had videos." "We'd rewind our favorite bits." "Oh!" "Have we got a video?" "Yes, we've got a video!" "In my days, we sat and listened to the entire canon of Dylan records." "We had a Dylan weekend." "And people were doing that with "The Young Ones", getting all six episodes and playing them on VHS in a party for a day." "You've bought me a present." "What is it?" "What do you do with it?" "No, don't tell me." "I'll guess." "It's a telescope." "A telescope with a mouse it!" "Brilliant!" "(SINGS) Dum de-dum de-dum de-dum... (SILLY VOICE) Hello, Riannon." "Are you enjoying the party?" "There's been some various flattering speculation about it over the years." ""It was a new look at the traditional family format."" ""Was Neil the mother?" "Was Rick the daughter?"" "There's a tiny grain of truth in that." "It is in the tradition of sitcom." "It's a group of people, a family of sorts, living together in a house." "And many a sitcom has gone along those lines." "Why are they closing down?" "It's only half past nine." " It's BBC1, Rick." " Oh, right." "Not this band again." "They're always on!" "Crap!" "What about some Hawkwind or Marillion?" "Yeah, fascists!" "No one tells me what time to go to bed!" " Go to bed, spotty." " Blimey!" "I was so new to telly." "I just wanted to do something I wanted to watch." "I didn't want that to tail off." "I wanted to stop it at its height." "We're young ones!" "Bachelor boys!" "Crazy, mad, wild-eyed, big-bottomed anarchists!" "Look out!" "Cliff!" "(BRAKES SCREECH)" "(NARRATOR) "The Young Ones" took sitcom closer to the edge then before, and then promptly drove over it." "Alternative comedy had torn up the sitcom rulebook for good." "(ALL) Phew!" "That was close!"