This Is Spinal Tap was phenomenal because it not only captured the essence of a British Heavy Metal band but also its detail. A remarkable achievement considering it was made by Americans. Bad News can be seen partly as a British answer to this, but its origins have more to do with Adrian Edmonson's personal interest in the metal genre.
Famous for playing Viv from The Young Ones, by 1983 he had enough pull to get his own ideas and scripts produced. This time, through Channel Four's The Comic Strip Presents... The result was the first episode of what would become a two part serious, now both available on the box-set of the The Comic Strip Presents...
Assuming the format of a badly made 'Rockumentary,' the story follows the band, Bad News, as they embark on an epic tour to . . . Grantham! (This choice was hardly incidental as this small town is the birthplace of Margaret Thatcher).
With Nigel Planer and Rik Mayall on board, the atmosphere and comedy is quite similar to The Young Ones. Edmondson as Vim Fuego plays a less exaggerated, more intelligent, but still brutally straightforward working class character, while Rik Mayall plays a cooler but still embarrassingly pretentious middle-class prat, Colin Grigson. Nigel Planer's Den Dennis is brilliantly mind-numbingly down-to-earth in a very British way (see the scene in the roadside cafe where he complains about his sausage and chips).
The fourth member of the band, Spider the drummer, played by Comic Strip producer, Peter Richardson, is the only one who wasn't in The Young Ones. Female support is provided by Dawn French playing a high school girl who runs away with the band.
The low production values add to the charm of the piece and much of the humour is as good as anything in Spinal Tap. There is also a serious point being made about how so-called 'realist' documentaries are manipulated and fabricated.
The middling success of this episode led to Bad News gigging occasionally as an actual rock/comedy act, often with big names like Brian May and Jeff Beck providing behind-the-scenes musical muscle, leading finally to a sequel to Bad News Tour being made five years later with the same cast, called More Bad News.
This time the band members, who have split up acrimoniously, are the subject of a forced reunion sponsored by a record company, and covered by a spaced out rock journalist played by Jennifer Saunders, the comedy partner of Dawn French who played the schoolgirl in Bad News Tour.
Although more money was on the table and production values were higher, the writing and storyline were somewhat weaker. The high points are when Colin Grigson is tracked down to his 9-to-5, working-in-a-bank, middle class life and tries to wriggle out of this by pretending to be his own twin brother "Trevor," as well as the visual comedy of the video shoot for Warriors of Genghis Khan, a brilliant song by the way:
The main focus this time round is the band playing the Monsters of Rock Festival at Castle Donnington. They were actually on the bill in 1986 and got bottled off the stage. The footage from this is incorporated into the film.
Guest appearances are made by Ozzy Osborne and Lemmy out of Motörhead, basically slagging them off. Part of this may have been simply jealousy because the music by Edmonson, Simon Brint, and others is actually very good metal music.
Colin Liddell
Revenge of Riff Raff
3rd March, 2016
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