From Fleabag to Flight of the Conchords: great TV sitcoms that started at the Edinburgh Fringe
Every August, thousands of hopeful actors and comedians descend on Edinburgh for what has become the world’s largest arts festival. Since 1947, the Fringe has launched the careers of serious thesps such as Steven Berkoff and Alan Rickman, but it’s best known as the ultimate talent-pool for comedy: Billy Connolly, Eddie Izzard and Jo Brand all made their breakthrough at the Fringe.
It’s been the birthplace of any number of small-screen double-acts (Pete and Dud, Fry and Laurie, Armstrong and Miller), while some of the most acclaimed TV comedies began in small, sweaty rooms just off Edinburgh's Royal Mile.
Here are seven sitcoms that would never have made it to our screens if it weren’t for the Fringe:
Mr Bean (ITV, 1990-1995)
Rowan Atkinson gave the gurning Mr Bean his first outing in a mid-Eighties sketch show at the Fringe. The lively audience reaction to the character in Edinburgh gave him the courage to give Bean his own show, albeit in Canada. In 1987, Atkinson took a risk by opting to perform on the French-speaking bill at the Just for Laughs comedy festival in Quebec, where Bean’s wordless bumbling was a success. Three years later, he was clowning about on ITV.
The League of Gentlemen (BBC, 1999-2002)
After their 1996 Fringe debut, the League’s unsettling stage show was snapped up immediately by Radio 4, who commissioned a series exploring the blackly comic goings-on in the fictional town of Royston Vasey. The troupe returned to Fringe the following year to win the prestigious Edinburgh Comedy Award (then called the Perrier), before landing their own Bafta-winning TV series.
All of Royston Vasey’s warped townsfolk were played by the show’s four creators: Jeremy Dyson, Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith. Putting the League behind them, Shearsmith and Pemberton went on to collaborate on BBC Two’s Psychoville, while Gatiss found fame as the co-creator of BBC One’s Sherlock and a regular writer for Doctor Who.
Time Gentlemen Please (ITV, 2000-2002)
Al Murray’s alter-ego The Pub Landlord made his first appearance in Pub Internationale, a 1994 Fringe showcase hosted by Harry Hill. Murray was nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award in 1996, 1997 and 1998, but finally bagged it in 1999 while performing as the xenophobic publican. From there, it was a quick hop to TV stardom: as well as his pub-based sitcom Time Gentlemen Please, the character has also hosted his own chat show (Al Murray's Happy Hour) and two spin-off TV quizzes, Fact Hunt and Compete for the Meat.
Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace (Channel 4, 2004)
Bestselling horror writer Garth Marenghi doesn't actually exist. But his creator, Matthew Holness, had a underground hit in 2000 with his show Garth Marenghi’s Fright Night, co-starring Richard Ayoade as the author's agent-turned-actor, performing in an adaptation of one of his sub-Stephen King chillers. Utterly committed to their parts, Holness and Ayoade refused to break character in interviews, even after their 2001 outing Netherhead bagged the Edinburgh Comedy Award.
The Channel 4 sitcom which followed was a glorious send-up of bad Eighties horror and sci-fi, spoofing the same sources that Stranger Things would later imitate in earnest. Launched with little fanfare, it had dismal viewing-figures and only lasted a single series, but is now considered a cult classic. The supporting cast is a who’s who of British comedy (including Kim Noble, Noel Fielding, and Stephen Merchant), with a particularly brilliant turn from Toast of London’s Matt Berry as a badly overdubbed doctor.
The Mighty Boosh (BBC, 2004-2007)
For fans of the TV series, it’s hard to imagine the globe-trotting surrealism of The Mighty Boosh on a shoestring budget. But glam-loving Vince Noir and awkward jazz fan Howard Moon made their first appearance in a small room at the Pleasance in Edinburgh.
Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt first came up with the idea while performing together in Stewart Lee’s 1997 Edinburgh show King Dong vs Moby Dick (in which Fielding played a talking penis, while Barratt appeared as the titular white whale). The following year, they gave their zoo-keeper characters a show of their own, winning Edinburgh’s Best Newcomer Award in the process.
Flight of the Conchords (HBO, 2007-9)
Although “New Zealand’s fourth most popular folk-comedy band” started out Down Under, it was the Edinburgh Fringe that gave them their big break. In 2003, Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement’s tiny show at a pay-what-you-want venue (The Caves) became that year’s word of mouth success story, earning a nod at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards – despite the fact that the duo had done no flyering or other promotion for it. A sitcom on BBC Radio 2 followed, leading to an Emmy-nominated TV series and a 2008 Grammy win for Best Comedy Album.
Fleabag (BBC, 2016)
Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s daring one-woman play about a miserable, sex-hungry Londoner divided critics at the Fringe, but generated enough buzz to earn it a London transfer. When the BBC’s head of comedy saw Waller-Bridge’s filthy tragi-comic drama at the Soho Theatre, he snapped it up at once for BBC Three Online, where it received a string of rave reviews before making the leap to BBC Two, and has since been picked up by Amazon.
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