Whoops Apocalypse (the TV series)

In the mists of time (1982), LWT made a six-part TV series that addressed the prospect of nuclear war. As a farce. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks rewatching this series and it holds up remarkably well.

The series follows the events leading up to a nuclear war and the main focus is on US president, Johnny Cyclops, a former actor, remember) whose national security advisor is a fundamentalist known as The Deacon. The Deacon doesn’t so much advise the president as inform him what decisions ere made. And, for an unpopular president in an election year, there is much to decide.

The Middle East is similarly unstable with the recently deposed Shah of Iran expelled from France and, following a change of UK government, finds himself stranded on a cross-Channel ferry for most of the series.

The UK government deserves a mention. A far-left Labour party, led by a wonderfully delusional prime minister, has promised to leave the Common Market, denuclearise and quit NATO. Neutrality doesn’t pan out so well for them and the UK ends up joining the Warsaw Pact.

As for Russia, paranoid and oversensitive and determined to gain control of the Middle Eastern oil supply.

The main plot revolves around a new bomb, developed on the Deacon’s orders. The original name for this — the Johnny Cyclops Bomb — is vetoed by the president and it subsequently referred to as the Quark Bomb (Formerly Known As The Johnny Cyclops Bomb After The President of the Same Name). The Deacon arranges for one of these bombs to be stolen and passed to Lacrobat, an international arms smuggler, who is charged with getting it to the Shah’s supporters in Iran who would use it to return the Shah to power.

Everything goes horribly wrong.

Whoops Apocalypse could well be the blackest, most bitingly satirical TV series ever made. A series of increasingly absurd events leads, with grim inevitability to a deeply dark ending. It’s written by David Renwick and David Marshall and boasts a strikingly strong roster of comedy talent, including Alexi Sayle, John Cleese, Geoffrey Palmer and a very small part for a very young Rik Mayall and the above synopsis doesn’t come close to capturing the sheer insanity of the series. The jokes come so fast that I am going to have to watch it again to catch the jokes I missed through still laughing at the previous one.

Surprisingly, for a series set in the early 80s and which directly parodies political characters from that time, a lot of the caricatures still work today. Which probably says something about the extent to which the world hasn’t changed.

Wear you mushroom with pride.