Citizen Smith
| Citizen Smith | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Created by | John Sullivan |
| Starring |
Robert Lindsay Mike Grady Cheryl Hall Hilda Braid Peter Vaughan Tony Steedman Tony Millan George Sweeney Stephen Greif David Garfield |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| No. of series | 4 |
| No. of episodes | 30 (list of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Release | |
| Original network | BBC One |
| Original release | 12 April 1977 – 31 December 1980 |
Citizen Smith is a British television sitcom written by John Sullivan, first broadcast from 1977 to 1980.
Citizen Smith starred Robert Lindsay as "Wolfie" Smith, a young Marxist "urban guerrilla" in Tooting, south London, who is attempting to emulate his hero Che Guevara. Wolfie is a reference to the Irish revolutionary Wolfe Tone who used the pseudonym Citizen Smith in order to evade capture by the British. Wolfie is the self-proclaimed leader of the revolutionary Tooting Popular Front (the TPF, merely a small bunch of his friends), the goals of which are "Power to the People" and "Freedom for Tooting". In reality he is an unemployed slacker and petty criminal whose plans fall through due to apathy, ineptitude and inexperience.
John Sullivan became a scenery shifter at the BBC in 1974 because of his desire to write a sitcom outline he had called Citizen Smith; fearing rejection if he sent the idea in, he decided it would be better to get a job, any job, at the BBC, learn more about the business and then meet someone who would actually take notice of his as yet unwritten script. After he approached producer Dennis Main Wilson, the first Citizen Smith script was written. Main Wilson loved the script and saw the potential for a series and it was put into production almost immediately as a pilot for Comedy Special – a showcase for new talent which had succeeded Comedy Playhouse – under the title Citizen Smith. The pilot was a success, and four series and a Christmas special were produced between 1977 and 1980.
It has been claimed that the "Tooting Popular Front" - fictionally based near to writer John Sullivan's childhood home of Balham - was partly inspired by real-life fellow-South London far-left group, the Brixton-based Workers' Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, activities of which were reported in The Times diary of April 1977, the same month the pilot episode of Citizen Smith was broadcast. However this seems to be contradicted by claims that Sullivan already had the idea for his series before starting working at the BBC in 1974, and therefore before the Workers Institute was formed.
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