The New Statesman
| The New Statesman | |
|---|---|
Series title card
|
|
| Genre | Sitcom, satire |
| Created by |
Laurence Marks Maurice Gran |
| Starring |
Rik Mayall Marsha Fitzalan Michael Troughton |
| Theme music composer | Modest Mussorgsky arrangement by Alan Hawkshaw |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language(s) | Language |
| No. of series | 4 |
| No. of episodes | 26 + 3 specials |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | John Bartlett Allan McKeown Michael Pilsworth David Reynolds |
| Running time | Approx. 24–25 minutes (including adverts) |
| Production company(s) |
Yorkshire Television (1987, 1989-1992) Alomo Productions (1992 & 1994) |
| Distributor |
ITV Studios Fremantle Media |
| Release | |
| Original network |
ITV (1987, 1989-1992) BBC One (1988 & 1994) |
| Picture format | 4:3 |
| Original release | 13 September 1987 – 30 December 1994 |
The New Statesman is a British sitcom made in the late 1980s and early 1990s satirising the United Kingdom's Conservative Party Government of the period. It was written by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran at the request of, and as a starring vehicle for, its principal actor Rik Mayall.
The show's theme tune is an arrangement by Alan Hawkshaw of part of the Promenade from Pictures at an Exhibition by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky.
The programme was made by the ITV franchise Yorkshire Television between 1987 and 1992, although the BBC made two special episodes; one in 1988, the other in 1994.
B'Stard is a selfish, greedy, dishonest, devious, lecherous, sadistic, self-serving ultra-right-wing Conservative backbencher, a sociopathic schemer who occasionally resorts to murder to fulfill his megalomaniac ambitions. The show was mostly set in B'Stard's antechambers in the Palace of Westminster and featured Piers Fletcher-Dervish as B'Stard's twittish upper-class sidekick. B'Stard shared a middle name with Norman Tebbit.
B'Stard was MP for the then fictional constituency of Haltemprice (In 1983, in the real world, a constituency of that name had been abolished; later, in 1997, re-drawn boundaries led to the constituency of Boothferry in East Yorkshire being renamed "Haltemprice and Howden". This seat's first incumbent was David Davis, a Conservative leadership candidate in 2001 and 2005). Goldsborough Hall, near Knaresborough, was used to portray his Yorkshire country residence and used as a backdrop for the opening photo sequences along with a few exterior shots in the first season including the scene where he tries to run over the gardener in his Bentley. The town of Knaresborough, North Yorkshire was used to film the opening election sequence in the first episode and roads around Goldsborough were used to shoot the police car chase from the first series where the policeman's gun backfires. Some city scenes were not filmed in London, but Leeds, with Leeds Town Hall used as the High Court.
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