It’s unusual to see Joe Wilkinson – affable comedian, panel-show oddball, celebrity Traitor, RNLI Christmas jumper model – in tears. However, at the end of his latest television show, this is the state in which we find him, hugging his friend and fellow comic David Earl, struggling to pull himself together. He’s thinking about his mum and dad, his brother, his childhood – but most of all he is thinking about the lighthearted 1970s Ronnie Barker sitcom Porridge. The opening episode of Joe and David’s Magical Sitcom Journey proves one thing beyond doubt: sitcoms are deeply ingrained in the British psyche.
Wilkinson and Earl’s three-part U&Gold series is an entertaining and unashamedly nerdy delve into three classic British sitcoms – Fawlty Towers, The Office and Porridge – with the pair speaking to those involved, as well as visiting filming locations.
The idea came from when Earl, speaking to Wilkinson on their podcast Chatabix, mentioned he had visited the cul-de-sac where they filmed the exteriors for Ever Decreasing Circles. A week later, a friend took them to the Brighton allotment where they filmed the 1992 Christmas special of Only Fools and Horses. “We spent an hour and a half going, ‘This is where Albert walked down!’” says Wilkinson. The pair wondered if someone would let them make this decidedly blokey, middle-aged hobby into a TV show: “And, weirdly, they did.”
