Time Gentlemen Please


Time Gentlemen Please is a British sitcom primarily written by Richard Herring and Al Murray and broadcast on Sky One from 2000 to 2002.

Premise

The show is set in a forgotten, unwelcoming pub whose right-wing landlord, 'Guv', has some very old-fashioned views on how a pub, and Britain, should be run. The Governor is an evolution of Al Murray's stage persona 'The Pub Landlord', which he had used in stand up since 1994.

Cast

Bar staff

Other Significant Characters:
The exterior shots of the pub were filmed at The Cowshed public house, at the corner of Barlby Rd and Ladbroke Grove, London W10, since demolished and rebuilt as a residential block circa 2013. The name The Cowshed is referred to in Series 2 Episode 3, where the Guv orders a new sign to be made saying the "Cow's Head", after "Ms Jackson, Cow", but he misspells the name. But he also adds a hand-painted sign of a cow with Miss Jackson's face. The pub is always referred to as the "pub by the chemical works", and its actually name is never referenced in any other episode.

Episodes

Series 1 (2000–2001)

Series 2 (2001–2002)

After the show

After the series came to a close, Al Murray has since suggested that his character Guv's real name was also Al Murray. This allows him to use the 'Pub Landlord' character for his stand-up performances. Most of Al Murray's appearances are either as the 'Pub Landlord', or as an alternative version of himself, usually a slightly more reserved version of the 'Pub Landlord' character.
In multiple episodes of the series, Guv directly repeats direct lines from Al Murray's stand up shows. In the Christmas Special, Guv repeats the 'When a child is born' routine from one of Murray's tours.
ITV later commissioned a game show called 'Fact Hunt'. The show was based on the fictional quiz show mentioned repeatedly throughout 'Time Gentlemen Please'. But instead of being hosted by the character "Cheeky" Alan Supple, it was hosted by the Pub Landlord. Each episode was based on a traditional pub quiz and featured contestants representing different pubs across South England. The first and only series was cancelled after only a few episodes due to low viewership.
ITV would later commission 'Al Murray's Happy Hour', which again was hosted by Murray in his Pub Landlord character. It was a chat show that was frequently compared to The Graham Norton Show on BBC1. While most guests appeared on the show to publicise something, they rarely got a chance to. Murray would get them to mention the thing once, and then he would mock it as a money-making endeavour, and then he would move on.
The original series was only scheduled for 6 episodes, but was extended due to unforeseen popularity. The second series was cut short due to low viewership.
Murray would later host his own concept for a game show on Dave. Murray would once again use his Pub Landlord character, but would still use his real name. The show was compared to a higher budget version of Fact Hunt. There has only been one series. There are no plans to make future episodes.

Distribution

After the show was aired on Sky One it was repeated on Paramount Comedy as it was formerly known. In 2011, Comedy Central Extra bought the rights to repeat some of the first series in a late night slot but have since never repeated the series again. Time Gentlemen Please was released onto DVD first in 2006 by Universal entitled Series 1 Part 1 which included the first six episodes of the first series, it was released on 8 May 2006. After Universal showed no plans to release any further episodes of the series onto DVD, ITV DVD later released a complete collection of the series featuring all 37 episodes on 16 March 2009.
In February 2020, Al Murray started re-releasing one episode of Time Gentlemen Please per week on his official YouTube channel. As of June 2020, the first 16 episodes of Series 1 have been re-released.