The Thin Blue Line

Richard Curtis brought him in to overhaul Blackadder from the second series onwards.

Uh, for Rowan Atkinson, he co-wrote the original Mr. Bean and created the police sitcom The Thin Blue Line in the '90s.

In the 20-teens, he wrote the Shakespeare sitcom Upstart Crow, which was a huge hit, and the health and safety gone mad workplace comedy The Right Way, which was not a success, and which he reveals in his memoir was originally written for Rik Mayall, but at the table read the BBC decided they wanted the show but they didn't want Rik Mayall in it.

Uh, he's also written 16 novels, some of which were, uh, the first four of which were major bestsellers and have been in print ever since they were published.

I told you the BBC pulled some clips.

Cleese went on Twitter and said, "If the BBC could prioritize making great programs ahead of social engineering, that might be worth the license fee." In another post, John Cleese shared, uh, something from James Dreyfus, a star of BBC comedies Gimme, Gimme, Gimme and The Thin Blue Line.

In that post, Dreyfus wrote, "So the BBC have decided that 11 of Mitchell and Webb sketches are no longer deemed appropriate for modern-day audiences, despite the fact that ALL," in caps, "their material comes from an intelligent source base that pokes fun at and ridicules the foolish and ignorant, and people have the nerve to suggest that we'd miss the BBC if it suddenly disappeared." Cleese responded, "The BBC knows what's best for us, and some of us know what's best for the BBC." Some more details on the cut sketches.

W- in one, Mitchell and Webb play English Civil War re-enactors who've grown bored of their roles, and recreate a conflict between government forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo and a rebel militia.

Very exciting.

And I remember being absolutely livid that we were going to watch her on TV and videotape it when we could have watched her on TV and taped The Thin Blue Line.

[laughs]

Which was Rowan Atkinson's sitcom of the time.

[laughs]

...

I think we should either watch The Thin Blue Line and tape Blackboard Jungle, or we should watch Blackboard Jungle and tape The Thin Blue." They're like, "Your sister's on television.

We're going to watch it and record it."

Yep

... uh, Fawlty Towers, and I was also a big fan of The Thin Blue Line with Rowan Atkinson.

Oh.

I, honestly, all those-