Rowan Atkinson Presents… Canned Laughter (ITV, 1979)
This is yet another comedy show that I don’t remember watching at the time of course, but I thought that I would track this down on YouTube, because this was just about the first opportunity to see a young up-and-coming comedian on TV, and he was someone who would go on to be hugely successful, not with just viewers in this country, but eventually around the world as well.
Rowan Atkinson first got involved in comedy in the late-70s, when he discovered that he had a talent for making people laugh without dialogue and only his physical actions, and although a few people have been called this, he really was worthy of the phrase “the rubber-faced funnyman”. He clearly works hard on perfecting his characters, and he already had this ability, even at this young age.
Rowan Atkinson Presents… Canned Laughter was a one-off show on ITV, which was supposed to be shown in the same month that the sketch show Not The Nine O’Clock News was going to debut on BBC2. However, the first edition which featured some political content and was pulled at the last minute, and this ended up not launching until October, once they had long since got the business of the General Election out of the way.
That means that he was still an unknown to viewers when this was shown, although he would soon find fame. In this, he played three characters. The first was Robert Box, who was rather bumbling, and indeed, he was mildly similar to Mr Bean. He was having trouble asking a woman out for a date (Sue “Marlene” Holderness, who was also in the bizarre ITV sketch show End Of Part One around this time).
He also played the rather bad comedian Dave Perry (not to be confused with the computer games writer who used to appear on GamesMaster I presume), who told some awful jokes. And there was also the rather grumpy company boss Mr Marshall. By the end, all three of them were in the same restaurant, all reflecting on the night hadn’t gone that well for them in its various ways.
The show’s title came from the canned laughter that was constantly played in the background (one or two of the jokes were also recycled in Mr Bean). You can’t go wrong with a bit of good old comedy falling over too. But after this promising debut, it was rather clear that he would go on to create much genuine laughter with his comedic skills for years to come. I don’t think that this was ever released on VHS or DVD though.
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