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| The Brittas Empire | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Genre | Black comedy Farce Sitcom |
| Created by | Andrew Norriss Richard Fegen |
| Directed by | Mike Stephens Christine Gernon |
| Starring | Chris Barrie Pippa Haywood Julia St John Mike Burns Harriet Thorpe Tim Marriott Jill Greenacre Russell Porter Judy Flynn Stephen Churchett Anouschka Menzies Andrée Bernard John Carrigan |
| Theme music composer | Frank Renton |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language | English |
| No. of series | 7 |
| No. of episodes | 52 (list of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Executive producer | Mike Stephens |
| Producer | Mike Stephens |
| Running time | 30 mins |
| Original release | |
| Network | BBC1 |
| Release | 3 January 1991 – 24 February 1997 |
| Infobox instructions (only shown in preview) | |
The Brittas Empire is a British sitcom created and originally written by Andrew Norriss and Richard Fegen. Chris Barrie played titular character Gordon Brittas, the well-intentioned but hugely incompetent manager of the fictional Whitbury New Town Leisure Centre. The show ran for seven series and 52 episodes – including two Christmas specials – from 1991 to 1997 on BBC1. Creators Norriss and Fegen co-wrote the first five series. The series peaked at 10 million viewers.
The Brittas Empire enjoyed a long and successful run throughout the 1990s, and gained large mainstream audiences. In 2004, the show came 47th on the BBC's Britain's Best Sitcom poll,[1] and all series have been released on DVD both individually as series and as a complete boxset. Best of the Britcoms noted the series has been hailed as "the Fawlty Towers of the 1990s" due to its "fast-paced, outrageous [comedy] full of inventive gags".[2]
The creators Andrew Norriss and Richard Fegen often combined farce with either surreal or dramatic elements in episodes. For example, in the first series, the leisure centre prepares for a royal visit, only for the doors to seal, the boiler room to flood and a visitor to become electrocuted. Unlike many traditional sitcoms, deaths were quite commonplace in The Brittas Empire. Barrie described the humour as "straightfoward, slapstick, very accessible characters, larger-than-life abnormal things happening in a very normal situation".[3]
- ^ "The Top 50 British Sitcoms". British Sitcom Guide. Archived from the original on 2 January 2007. Retrieved 15 April 2008.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) - ^ Berman, Garry (1999). Best of the Britcoms : from Fawlty Towers to Absolutely Fabulous. Dallas, Tex: Taylor. ISBN 978-0-87833-160-4.
- ^ Red Dwarf Smegazine (June 1993). June 1993.