Whoops Apocalypse


Whoops Apocalypse is a six-part 1982 television sitcom by Andrew Marshall and David Renwick, made by London Weekend Television for ITV. Marshall and Renwick later reworked the concept as a 1986 film of the same name from ITC Entertainment, with almost completely different characters and plot, although one or two of the original actors returned in different roles.
The British budget label Channel 5 Video released a compilation cassette of all six episodes edited together into one 137-minute chunk in 1987.
In 2010, Network released both the complete, unedited series and the movie on a 2-DVD set entitled Whoops Apocalypse: The Complete Apocalypse..
In 1992 Fox Television produced a short-lived sitcom, Woops!, which may have been loosely inspired by Whoops Apocalypse, though the American series was set after the apocalypse rather than before it.

Series

The series details the weeks leading up to the Apocalypse. It features a chaotic and increasingly unstable global political situation in which nuclear alerts are accidentally triggered by malfunctioning Space Invaders machines. The naive and highly unpopular Republican U.S. President Johnny Cyclops is advised by an insane right-wing fundamentalist security advisor, called The Deacon, who claims to have a direct hotline to God.
In the Eastern Hemisphere, things are similarly unstable. Soviet Premier Dubienkin is in fact a series of clones, which keep dying and being replaced. Meanwhile, the deposed Shah of Iran, Shah Massiq Rassim, led by his advisor Abdab who is always blindfolded to avoid looking upon the Shah's magnificence, is shunted around the world in search of a refuge.
The main danger is the Deacon's development of a new super-powerful American nuclear weapon. This is originally called the Johnny Cyclops Bomb; later, when the President vetoes the name, it is renamed the Quark Bomb . The Deacon arranges for Lacrobat, a disguised international arms smuggler nicknamed The Devil, to steal a Quark Bomb and take it to Iran, to help the Shah in his counterrevolution. The Soviets get word of this and decide to invade, gaining control over the world's oil supply.
The Soviets have a new ally in British Prime Minister Kevin Pork, a parody of left-wing Labour politicians Michael Foot and Peter Shore. Pork, who has gone insane and believes himself to be Superman, heads an especially left-wing government. The British Foreign Secretary is blackmailed by the Soviets to join the Warsaw Pact. This situation so unnerves the foreign secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer that they also lose their sanity, don Green Lantern and Hawkman costumes, and are locked up in a padded cell at 10 Downing St.
The Soviets are also holding two elderly American tourists named Jonathan and Martha Hopper captive. They are constantly tortured by Commissar Alex Solzhenitsyn in the belief they are secretly CIA spies. This turns out to be true, but the Hoppers are crushed by a helicopter in a bungled CIA rescue operation. This does not help Cyclops's nosediving popularity rating, which is just below that of Charles Manson. The Deacon stages an assassination attempt in order to help Cyclops' flagging popularity. It is damaged further when the speeding ambulance carrying Cyclops to the hospital accidentally runs over his highly popular main opponent, Democratic Senator Jimmy Hennessy. By the end of the series we're told Cyclops is now less popular than the Boston Strangler.
Eventually the Quark Bomb is accidentally detonated in Israel when Lacrobat's attempt to prevent it being incinerated goes horribly wrong, destroying the country and killing most of the US army who were stationed there. Meanwhile, the Shah, who has temporarily been given sanctuary aboard a space shuttle, manages to crash it into the Moscow Kremlin. Believing it to be a bomb, the Russians launch their weapons at America. In the final scene Soviet missiles are on their way to obliterate the United States and President Cyclops has to decide whether to retaliate. The title sequence already showed the aftermath of the decision, Earth reduced to a nuclear wasteland. In a final twist, we discover that the woman we see in the title sequence selling buttons reading "WEAR YOUR MUSHROOM WITH PRIDE" is in fact the First Lady, who was hidden in a fallout shelter and is one of the few survivors of the war.

DC Comics references

The writers appear to be fans of DC Comics. As stated above, the delusional British PM and his ministers don DC superhero garb; his caped white whippet 'Krypto' is hurled to its doom from a 10 Downing Street window for its "fly around the block". Semi-generic Superman adventures and specific characters are frequently mentioned.. An Iranian mullah is mentioned to have "dressed as Aquaman". Ed Bishop's character Jay Garrick has the same name as the Golden Age Flash. The elderly American farming couple held by the Soviets are named Jonathan and Martha, which are the names of Superman's Earth parents in current DC continuity. CIA agent Jedd Grodd's last name references Gorilla Grodd.

Cast

Also appearing are: Kirstie Pooley, Matt Zimmerman, Bob Sherman, Lou Hirsch, Jack Klaff, Ed Devereaux, Rik Mayall and small uncredited roles by Stuart Milligan, Carmen Silvera, John Dair and Pat Astley.

Film

In 1986, a film of the same title was released. The plot of the film is almost completely different from the TV series, but does share certain commonalities.
British Prime Minister Sir Mortimer Chris, a conservative politician who goes insane, is a fusion of US President Johnny Cyclops and UK Prime Minister Kevin Pork.