Fun at the Funeral Parlour

Fun at the Funeral Parlour
Genre	Comedy
Written by	Rhys Thomas
Directed by	Peter Boyd MacLean (1st) Christine Gernon (2nd)
Starring	Rhys Thomas as Percy William Thomas as Ivor Alex Lowe as Arwell Tony Way as Gwynne
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English / Welsh
No. of series	2
No. of episodes	13
Production
Running time	30 minutes
Release
Original network	BBC Choice
Original release	1 January 2001 – 12 March 2002

Fun at the Funeral Parlour was a comedy series broadcast on BBC Choice and BBC Three for two series in 2001 and 2002. It was set in a Welsh funeral directors called "Thomas, Thomas, Thomas and Thomas". It is set around the Swansea area of south Wales in the fictitious town of Trebanos in tribute to the writer's father who came from the real town in that area.

The series was written by Rhys Thomas with the script edited by Charlie Higson. Rhys also starred in the show alongside William Thomas, Alex Lowe and Tony Way. Thomas created the show at the age of 20, after contributing to The Fast Show becoming the youngest person ever to create, write, and star in their own TV sitcom. The second series featured a theme tune written and performed by Queen's guitarist, Brian May. He and producer of the series, Simon Lupton went on to work with Brian May and Queen on numerous DVDs and Queen documentaries.

Ivor Thomas

Arwell Thomas (33 years old)

Gwynne Thomas

Percy Thomas

Larry Nazareth

The cigar smoking Lord Mayor played by Mark Williams, makes an appearance in both series 1 and 2. A keen otter lover he has two of them as pets. Simeon and Bod are mentioned in both series but sadly Bod has a bad case of gout in his toes. His other interests include rating his "double deckers" in the toilet bowl and collecting dialysis machines.

A shrewd man he sees an opportunity of exploiting "Arwell the Elephant-man" and converting the parlour into a freak-show called "The Undertakers From Hell" (2.2). Perhaps seen as a personal friend to Ivor, who rings up (the unseen) Nazareth for legal help when rival undertakers move in on the Thomas' patch.

He is married to an unnamed woman but this does not stop him from being caught in the woods, his trousers down in an uncompromising position with a hunting decoy (1.2).

Rival funeral directors

The first set of rival funeral directors in the town are the Bennet brothers (played by James Duke and David Sibley), a set of once conjoined siamese twins who were "joined at the satchels". They are the joint father of their daughter, Sian played by Wendy Wason who becomes a love interest to both Arwell and Percy in the two shows that she appears in.

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Wikipedia