Genre | Comedy |
---|---|
Running time | 28 minutes |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Language(s) | English |
Home station | BBC Radio 4 |
Starring |
Danny Robins Dan Tetsell Lucy Montgomery |
Written by |
Danny Robins Dan Tetsell |
Original release | 18 March 2004 – 13 January 2009 (BBC 7) |
No. of series | 3 |
No. of episodes | 18 |
Website | Official website |
The Museum of Everything is a BBC Radio 4 comedy sketch show, written and performed by , Danny Robins and Dan Tetsell with Lucy Montgomery. The show generally occupied the 18:30 comedy slot on BBC Radio 4, with repeats several times a year on BBC Radio 4 Extra. The first series was broadcast in 2004, a second series in 2005 and a third series in summer 2006, the latter of which made continued use of favourite characters from past episodes as well as creating new ones. It is set in the fabled "Museum of Everything", an apparently infinite space housing exhibitions on everything from the history of stairs to the Greek buttock gallery.
There seems to be some confusion about the titles of many of the episodes. This list gives the official title as given in the BBC's catalogue entry, followed by known alternatives such as those on epguides.com's page.
Mentioned only a few times in the early episodes, the Curator was eventually replaced by the gravelly-voiced singer-songwriter Tom Waits, after the other four applicants were turned down. He removed the filing system and replaced it with an upright piano, and hired a lot of his more unusual friends into lesser jobs within the Museum.
Whenever anyone talks to the Curator, he lights a match and sets off into a surreal anecdote about someone he once met, such as one young woman who was, "blind in one eye and couldn't see out the other." When finally confronted about it, he was forced to admit that he doesn't actually know anyone with a full set of working eyes.
The show always opens with John and George, two Bristolian tour guides, and their catchphrase of "cheers then, thanks then, cheers then, thanks then...". They pop up throughout each episode reminding customers of museum attractions and rules. Often the rules are twisted in their favour, one example being: "Remember: please do not leave unattended bags anywhere in the museum. They will be stolen. By us."
In the third series there is a temp/trainee tour guide called Debbie, who is a bit clumsy and dim. George falls victim to a "swath of redundancies", which in fact only affects him. His replacement is a Mr Thomas, headhunted from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, and therefore more eager than his colleague John to educate the general public.