Up Pompeii!

''Up Pompeii!'' is a British television comedy series broadcast between 1969 and 1970, starring Frankie Howerd. The first series was written by Talbot Rothwell, a scriptwriter for the ''Carry On'' films, and the second series by Rothwell and Sid Colin. Two later specials were transmitted in 1975 and 1991 and a film adaptation was released in 1971.

Background

''Up Pompeii!'' first appeared in the Comedy Playhouse series, after Michael Mills and Tom Sloan from BBC Comedy and Light Entertainment visited the ruins of Pompeii. Since Mills had recently seen Frankie Howerd in the stage musical '' A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum'' he casually remarked to Sloan that he half expected Howerd to suddenly appear round the corner. Sloan had replied 'Why not?', and the idea took root. Talbot Rothwell was invited to write a script and the designer Sally Hulke visited Pompeii with a sketch book and camera to ensure realism and authenticity.

A slight variation of this is related by Bill Cotton who, in a June 2000 interview with author Graham McCann, said the idea originated with Mills, then the BBC's Head of Comedy, after seeing Frankie Howerd in that same play.Nicholas J. Cull "Infamy! Infamy!" in Sandra R. Joshel (et al., eds.
''Imperial Projections: Ancient Rome in Modern Popular Culture''
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005 001 pp.180–81

There were concerns in the Corporation's copyright department that the parallels between the musical and the comedy series might lead to litigation over possible plagiarism, but Rothwell told the BBC that he had seen neither the stage musical nor its film adaptation.

Plot

The series is set in ancient, pre-eruption Pompeii, with the players bearing Latinised names suggestive of their character. Howerd is the slave Lurcio (pronounced ''Lurk-io''); his bumbling old master Ludicrus Sextus (Max Adrian, then Wallas Eaton), the promiscuous wife is Ammonia (Elizabeth Larner), their daughter Erotica ( Georgina Moon) and their virginal son Nausius (Kerry Gardner). Other regulars are Senna the Soothsayer (Jeanne Mockford) who constantly warns of impending death and destruction and, in series one, Plautus (Willie Rushton) a semi-godlike figure, making pithy comments from a location somewhere between the clouds and Mount Olympus. Guest stars included several actresses from the ''Carry On'' film series, including Barbara Windsor, Wendy Richard and Valerie Leon.

The format was an exotic backdrop for an endless series of double entendres and risqué gags from Howerd, constantly breaking the fourth wall with asides to the live studio audience which go unheard by the other characters (a device harking back to classical theatre). He also bemoans the quality of his script, complaining the other players have the best lines. Each episode starts with a prologue from Howerd – which is invariably interrupted by the doom-laden warnings of Senna, or the demands of his master or mistress.

Thirteen 30-minute episodes were made, in two series (March – May and September – October 1970). In between there also was a 13 minute ''Up Pompeii'' segment in the 1970 ''Royal Television Gala Performance''.

In addition, there had been a pilot episode (1969) as part of Comedy Playhouse, and two later special episodes both called ''Further Up Pompeii'', one in 1975 and the other, written by Brian Leveson and Paul Minett, in 1991. The latter sparked speculation that there could be a new series, but Howerd's death in 1992 put an end to any such prospect.

Apart from the change to the actor playing Ludicrus Sextus, there are some differences between the two series of ''Up Pompeii'', the second series using noticeably fewer sets than the previous. This may have been due to the second series being commissioned, filmed and broadcast within four months from the end of the first.

Films and sequels

The show inspired three films. The first was also called ''Up Pompeii'' (1971) and added such characters as Bilius, Voluptua, Scrubba and Villanus. It ended with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which anachronistically (for AD79) included Nero (who added, " Wait till you see what I've up for Rome!"), and had a brief epilogue in which Howerd played a modern-day museum guide showing the petrified remains of the Pompeiian characters. It was produced by Ned Sherrin and retained only Frankie Howerd from the cast of the original series (Ludicrus, for example, was played by Michael Hordern in the film adaptation, Erotica by Madeline Smith and Nausius by Royce Mills). However, Aubrey Woods appeared in the TV series and the film, playing different roles.

The two sequels were ''Up the Chastity Belt'' (1971) and ''Up the Front'' (1972) which transported Howerd's servile, cowardly character to Medieval times (as Lurkalot) and World War I (as Private Lurk). A few years later, the BBC made one final special called ''Further up Pompeii!'' (with exclamation mark) in 1975.

The format of ''Up Pompeii'' inspired two later TV series, ''Whoops Baghdad'' (1973) and '' Then Churchill Said to Me'' (1982), both starring Howerd. The later series was shelved due to the outbreak of the Falklands War and – thought politically insensitive – the series was aired after Howerd's death in 1993.

A pilot episode for a US version of ''Up Pompeii'' for ABC, initially called ''The Pompeii Way'' but later renamed ''Up the toga'', still starring Frankie Howerd and co-starring Foster Brooks, was recorded in 1971, but it did not proceed to a full series and was never shown. Publicity shots on Getty Images show that it involved the "Olympia Theatre Company", suggesting it may have been based on episode 5 of series 1 ("The actors"). The existence of this pilot was undocumented for a long time, until the publicity photographs were noticed online. For a long time, it was unclear if the program still existed, until a 16mm film copy was sold on eBay late 2022.

The 1991 special ''Further up Pompeii'' (without exclamation mark), made twenty years after the series had ended and by different writers, could have served as a pilot episode for a revival of the series; however Frankie's death prevented that.

Stage play

In 1988, Howerd asked one of his writers, Miles Tredinnick, to work on an updated stage version of ''Up Pompeii!'' for a proposed national UK tour, but the play was shelved when Howerd was offered a chance by Larry Gelbart to reprise his role as Pseudolus in '' A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum'' at the Piccadilly Theatre in London's West End of London, West End. The play was eventually revised and updated and had its premiere in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, Chesterfield in January 2011 and then embarked on a UK tour. Produced and directed by Bruce James, it starred Damian Williams, host of Sky One's ''Are You Smarter than a 10 Year Old? (British game show), Are You Smarter than a 10 Year Old?'', as Lurcio the slave. An acting edition of the play was published by Josef Weinberger Ltd in 2012.

Audio revival

In 2019, it was announced that British production company Spiteful Puppet would celebrate the 50th anniversary of the broadcast of the "Comedy Playhouse" pilot by releasing an audio adaptation based on the stage play by Miles Tredinnick. The script was adapted by Barnaby Eaton-Jones, Daniel McGachey and Iain McLaughlin, with Eaton-Jones serving as producer and director of the live recording sessions at London's Shaw Theatre on 12 October 2019. The two staged performances starred Madeline Smith as Ammonia, Frazer Hines as Ludicrus, Rosa Coduri as Erotica, Jack Lane as Nausius, Jilly Breeze as Senna, Ben Perkins as Corneus and Barnaby Eaton-Jones as Kretinus, with guest stars Cleo Rocos as Suspenda, Camille Coduri as Voluptua, and Tim Brooke-Taylor as Trecherus. The lead role of Lurcio was played in the manner of Frankie Howerd by David Benson, who had previously played Howerd on stage and radio. A double CD release was announced for release on 29 November 2019.

DVD release

For many years, no complete home video release had been undertaken due to the nature of the videotape master materials. Like many television series of this era, most of the original videotapes were Lost television broadcast, wiped.

In the late 1970s, missing episodes of ''Up Pompeii!'' were found in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) archive. Because of the differences in international broadcasting, these copies had been converted to the North American NTSC television standard, and so one chunk of the series remained in its native PAL format, but the majority were found in a poorly-converted (dating long before digital conversion methods) NTSC state.The lostshows.com websit
lists
12 of the 17 surviving in the North American standard. The picture quality of some of the Canadian finds was not high, and so their marketability was severely limited. However, six episodes were released on VHS in 1991 by BBC Video. (These tapes were re-released by Second Sight in 1999, with a small music edit made to the episode featuring Jamus Bondus.)

In 2004–2005, through the success of a group of BBC employees' restoration work on similar NTSC-only episodes of ''Doctor Who'', the BBC decided to convert all their NTSC-only productions (as reclaimed from various international stations) back to their original PAL format using a new computer-controlled process, Reverse Standards Conversion. A PAL-like, higher-quality image resulted in a more stable picture. The new restored masters made their debut on BBC4 in August 2006, and the BBC's DVD distribution arm 2entertain announced a brand new ''Frankie Howerd Collection'' in mid-September 2006.

The collection includes not only both original series of ''Up Pompeii!'', but also the 1975 BBC special ''Further Up Pompeii!'' (not to be confused with the 1991 ITV (TV network), ITV special ''Further Up Pompeii''), the already-released ''Comedy Greats: Frankie Howerd'' DVD, and another Howerd series along a similar vein, '' Then Churchill Said to Me''.

List of episodes

Pilot

''Series 1''

''Series 2''

Specials

Film

See also

*''Up the Chastity Belt'', a medieval spin-off film
*''Up the Front'', a World War I spin-off film
*wiktionary:titter, Titter
*List of films based on British sitcoms

References

External links

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*{{British Comedy Guide, tv, up_pompeii
Nearly Up Pompeii!'' by Miles Tredinnick

1969 British television series debuts
1991 British television series endings
1960s British sitcoms
1970s British sitcoms
1990s British sitcoms
BBC television sitcoms
Pompeii in popular culture
English-language television shows
ITV sitcoms
London Weekend Television shows
Television series by ITV Studios
Television shows adapted into films
Television shows adapted into plays
Television dramas set in ancient Rome
Television series set in the Roman Empire