Writer Lise Mayer wanted to make The Middle-Aged Ones

Groundbreaking 1980s sitcom The Young Ones could have had a follow-up entitled The Middle-Aged Ones, co-creator Lise Mayer has revealed.

The writer said she always wanted to catch up with students Rick, Vyvyan, Neil and Mike later in life.

And she also intended the comedy to run for longer than its two series – but Rik Mayall, who also wrote the show with her and Ben Elton, blocked the idea.

Mayer made the revelation when she appeared in the latest podcast from Alexei Sayle, who played various members of the Balowski family on the show.

She said: ‘I always had the idea of doing The Middle-Aged Ones. I’d had this idea that Neil would have cut his hair and be wearing a suit. Vyvyan would be on his third marriage and work in a hospital and still drink too much. The usual disappointment of most people’s lives – what they think they are going to do when they are 18, 19 or 20, and what they end up doing.’

As Sayle mused that ‘I think we finished it all to early really…’ and that The Young Ones could have had a third series, Mayer said the decision to stop was Mayall’s

‘The only reason why we didn’t do a third series and a Christmas special is because Rik had this romantic notion that we were Fawlty Towers and that we had to do two series and get out, and keep it in amber before we went too far. But I think we had a lot more we could have done.’

She also said the show could not be made today – not for reasons of political correctness, but because the BBC took more creative risks when the show started in 1982.

‘It’s because Paul Jackson, who was a junior producer, could go into his head of department and say, "there’s this thing I want to do" and they would go, "well it looks like complete shite to me but I trust your judgement, give it a go".

‘And you can’t imagine that happening now. Plus we had a huge budget.’

As has often been reported, the inclusion of bands in The Young Ones meant it fell under the aegis of the variety department, rather than comedy, where there was more money.

Although the series featured such notorious hellraisers as Motorhead and The Damned, Mayer said that the ‘most disruptive’ group they had on was Rip Rig + Panic – a post-punk outfit featuring Andi Oliver, now known for more sedate appearances on BBC bakery shows.

Sayle recalled: ‘They were awful, they were so badly behaved, they were all "this drink’s real - let’s pinch it" and I was like "no, no, no, they’re props we need them for continuity.

‘That was Andi Olver? They were terrifying, they were scary.’

Mayer also recalled the process of casting someone to play Mike – a role for which  Timothy Spall and Keith Allen were considered before Christopher Ryan was cast.

And she mused: ‘It’s amazing in retrospective that we didn’t think, "why don’t we have a woman – or a person of colour?"

• Listen to the Alexei Sayle podcast here.

Published: 9 Dec 2021