The BEST episodes of The Comic Strip Presents
Every episode ever - ranked by fan votes!
The Comic Strip Presents... debuted on 2 November 1982, the opening night of Channel 4. The first episode was "Five Go Mad in Dorset", a parody of The Famous Five. It was written by Peter Richardson and Pete Richens, who wrote most of the early episodes. "Five Go Mad..." drew anger from some viewers for the way it mercilessly satirised a children's classic, although the Enid Blyton estate had given permission for the broadcast. A meeting was called to discuss the group's future with Channel 4, after complaints from viewers.
#1 - Bad News Tour
Season 1 - Episode 4 - Aired 1/24/1983
Fifth-rate heavy metal band Bad News is the subject of a rock documentary. Band members Vim Fuego, Den Dennis, Colin Grigson, and Spider Webb take to the road in search of lager, gigs, and schoolgirls.
#2 - Didn't You Kill My Brother?
Season 3 - Episode 5 - Aired 3/19/1988
Carl Moss, a convicted murder, is released early from prison and is confronted by his brother who framed him.
#3 - More Bad News
Season 3 - Episode 2 - Aired 2/27/1988
Five years after their far-from-amicable break-up, the members of heavy metal band Bad News reunite when they are offered a record deal and a chance to play the festival at Castle Donington.
#4 - Five Go Mad on Mescalin
Season 2 - Episode 1 - Aired 11/2/1983
Child adventurers Julian, Dick, George, Anne, and their dog Timmy return to the countryside for the holidays, only to learn that Uncle Quentin, the well known scientist and homosexual, has escaped from prison. The children set out to unlock the mysteries of Love Island.
#5 - The Strike
Season 3 - Episode 1 - Aired 2/20/1988
Al Pacino (Peter Richardson) and Meryl Streep (Jennifer Saunders) star as Arthur Scargill and his wife in an overly-dramatized Hollywood epic about the 1984 miners' strike.
#6 - GLC: The Carnage Continues...
Season 4 - Episode 3 - Aired 2/15/1990
Charles Bronson (Robbie Coltrane) stars in a big-budget Hollywood film as Ken Livingstone, a man of the people and elected leader of the GLC. After successfully preventing the Tories from flooding South London to turn it into a yacht club, Livingstone makes it his one-man mission to stop ""The Ice Maiden"" Margaret Thatcher from beheading the Prince of Wales and taking over the kingdom.
#7 - Queen of the Wild Frontier
Season 5 - Episode 3 - Aired 5/6/1993
Two escaped convicts hide in a country house owned by two women.
#8 - Five Go Mad in Dorset
Season 1 - Episode 1 - Aired 11/2/1982
Julian, Dick, George, and Anne are four children with a taste for adventure, as well as for lashings of ginger beer. They set out on a bicycle ride through the country, having picnics aplenty and exposing heinous crimes such as homosexuality.
#9 - Mr Jolly Lives Next Door
Season 3 - Episode 3 - Aired 3/5/1988
Two boozers who run the Dreamytime Escort agency are in for the night of their lives when they accept a job to ""take out"" popular TV entertainer Nicholas Parsons.
#10 - Funseekers
Season 3 - Episode 6 - Aired 3/26/1988
A social loser goes to a sleazy holiday resort in Spain for under-30s.
#11 - Detectives on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown
Season 5 - Episode 1 - Aired 4/22/1993
In a sequel to The Bullshitters, Bonehead and Foyle are called in to solve a 70s-style murder. Unfortunately, so are 70s detectives Shouting George of The Weeney and Jason Bentley of Department Z, and 90s Northern detective Dave Spanker.
#12 - Dirty Movie
Season 2 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/7/1984
A theater owner waits for the mail to deliver his dirty movie
#13 - The Yob
Season 3 - Episode 4 - Aired 3/12/1988
A trendy music video director has his brain crossed with that of a football hooligan in a freak accident resulting when he mistakes a cerebral teleportational machine for a portable toilet. He begins a slow and painful transition from artsy high-fashion connoisseur to violent Neanderthal thug, finding himself physically incapable of suppressing his newfound urges to drink lager and vandalize public lavatories. This episode pays tribute to David Cronenberg's film classic The Fly.
#14 - South Atlantic Raiders
Season 4 - Episode 1 - Aired 2/1/1990
A security service driver for a British bank meets and falls in love over the radio with a woman stranded on a bird watching expedition in the South Atlantic. When he is tricked into thinking the Falklands are under attack by an enemy army, he takes drastic measures to finance a rescue mission to save his new girlfriend.
#15 - Les Dogs
Season 4 - Episode 6 - Aired 3/8/1990
A wedding between feuding upper-class families turns into an all-out war zone. In the midst of the chaos and bloodshed, the wedding photographer becomes enraptured by the bride's beatific beauty, and the story drifts into the surreal realm of his imagination, where the lines between fantasy, dream, and reality become hopelessly blurred.
#16 - Jealousy
Season 5 - Episode 6 - Aired 5/27/1993
A jealous husband is consumed to the point of madness with suspicions about his wife's extracurricular activities.
#17 - A Fistful of Travellers' Cheques
Season 2 - Episode 4 - Aired 1/21/1984
Carlos and Miguel are Englishmen obsessed with the mystique of the Old West-- would-be gunmen ever in search of a brawl. Traveling the countryside by public rail on a fantasy holiday, in costumes straight out of a Spaghetti Western, they hook up with spunky Australian tourists, a hippie hitchhiker, and a mass-murderer who works in an abattoir but dresses as a matador.
#18 - War
Season 1 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/3/1983
It's 1985 and the Communist Warsaw Pact countries have seized control of England. A young married couple retreats to a countryside cottage, but they soon find themselves hopelessly separated and swept up in the chaos of a war-torn nation
#19 - Summer School
Season 1 - Episode 5 - Aired 1/31/1983
Summer school students taking a course on the Iron Age construct a primitive village in the center of a university campus, where they must learn to fend for themselves without modern conveniences.
#20 - The Beat Generation
Season 1 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/17/1983
A group of Beatnik artists and poets convene for a weekend of debauchery, destructive behavior, and clever conversation at the house of naive young wannabe Desmond while his parents are out of town.
#21 - Eddie Monsoon - A Life?
Season 2 - Episode 6 - Aired 2/4/1984
Relentless alcoholic, drug addict, and fame-obsessed TV personality Eddie Monsoon is the subject of a Channel 4 expose that looks back over his life and loves, while he lies bedridden in a rehab hospital.
#22 - Gino - Full Story and Pics
Season 2 - Episode 5 - Aired 1/28/1984
A small-time thief on the run from the law is pursued by over-zealous police officers masquerading as milkmen and postmen, framed for murder by a homicidal housewife, and built up by the media to sound like an infamous criminal mastermind. Every step he takes carries him further into a life of crime, and it looks like there's no way out for Gino, but when he teams up with a gutsy typist on the run from her own unfulfilling life, the two of them may find a way to turn the media attention to their advantage.
#23 - Gregory: Diary of a Nutcase
Season 5 - Episode 4 - Aired 5/13/1993
In this none-too-subtle parody of the film The Silence of the Lambs, a rookie police cadet falls prey to the sexual allure of imprisoned cannibalistic serial killer Dr Ghengis; meanwhile, aspiring serial killer Gregory Dawson makes a video diary of his botched attempts to stalk and imprison a woman in his homemade torture chamber.
#24 - Susie
Season 2 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/14/1984
A lascivious schoolteacher has grown hopelessly bored with her bland small-town existence. Her world takes a sudden turn, however, when a wealthy, impetuous pop star moves to town to get a taste of country life. Suddenly, she must choose between her tedious but adoring husband, her indifferent but steady lover, and this intriguing, unpredictable new man in her life.
#25 - South Atlantic Raiders, Part II: 'Argie Bargie!'
Season 4 - Episode 2 - Aired 2/8/1990
Having robbed a bank and hijacked a plane to travel to the South Atlantic to protect Frances, the woman he loves, Stan finds himself at the mercy of Argentinian soldiers plotting to recapture the Falkland Islands.