Comic Strip hero Peter Richardson is planning to revive the series which introduced a new generation of comedians, including Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, to our screens.

The sorry state of TV comedy could get a much-needed boost by the return of the Comic Strip. This was the series - first on C4 and then BBC2 - that introduced viewers to a new generation of comedians including Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Adrian Edmondson, Rik Mayall, Robbie Coltrane, Nigel Planer, Alexei Sayle and Keith Allen.

If Peter Richardson is the Comic Stripper who's less well known to the public, that's not because he didn't play a key role. He was a prime mover as writer, director and sometime actor. Many of the performers had passed through the comedy club he opened above Raymond's Revue Bar in Soho in 1980.

Today, he's a busy director of commercials and pop promos as well as movies such as Churchill: The Hollywood Years, now on DVD after a cinema release last year.

While the other original members are busy doing their own things, he's thinking of reviving the Comic Strip. How many of the original performers would be interested is unclear. "I think we might be doing some more," says Richardson.

"We're talking at the moment about doing a series, maybe with some new people as well. They're all one-off films. It would be nice to mix some of the original people with some new ones."

He's been looking at the old Comic Strip shows again in preparation for their release on DVD later this year.

The Comic Strip's first TV film, Five Go Mad In Dorset, was shown on C4's opening night in 1982. It was the first of a series that included A Fistful Of Travellers Cheques, The Bad News Tour and, perhaps most famously The Strike.

The latter was Hollywood's take on the miners' strike with Richardson as Al Pacino playing Arthur Scargill and Jennifer Saunders as Meryl Streep playing Mrs Scargill. It was the perfect mix of satire and spoof at which the Comic Strip excelled.

The same formula led to the TV film GLC, in which Robbie Coltrane played Death Wish star Charles Bronson playing the-then council leader (and now Mayor of London) Ken Livingstone.

The team later moved to BBC2 and produced cinema films including Supergrass, The Pope Must Die and Eat The Rich.

In many respects, Churchill: The Hollywood Years comes from the same mould as the Comic Strip work as it has Hollywood viewing Winston Churchill as a Bruce Willis type action hero. The film has the cigar-chomping GI romancing Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen of England. Among the cast are comic names, such as Harry Enfield, Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, that you suspect Richardson would like to include in any new Comic Strip TV series.

'I knew I wanted Leslie Phillips and Harry Enfield, as well as various people I've worked with and collaborated with. I thought they all did very well. I didn't feel as though I was crowbaring comedy names in for the sake of it."

The movie was re-edited after test screenings, and those scenes are among deleted items on the DVD. "There were scenes we created that didn't fit into the movie. They interfered with the business of the film. Comedy is such a delicate thing, but I think we put out the right film," says Richardson.

He's aware that using an iconic figure like Churchill, or the Queen for that matter, in a comedy will not to be everyone's taste. "I don't think historians will talk to me or deign to give me the time of day," he says. "It's all about the rewriting of history. Hollywood does that all the time and reinforces certain stereotypes. So you have Churchill running through the corridors of Buckingham Palace shooting, just like Bruce Willis in Die Hard."

TV comedy is going through a bad patch at the moment. If he's going to compare the Comic Strip with anything, it would be The Office, which also didn't take the usual sit-com route. "I suppose the Comic Strip was always based on a kind of reality of character," he says.

Richardson's own move from acting to going behind the camera as a director was a natural one. "Right from the start I liked the idea of assembling something and imagining what it's going to look like. I knew whom I was writing for in the group and then actually seeing the result in the editing was fantastic," he says.

"I began to feel I wasn't sure about my acting. When I look back, some of the things are okay. In the end I felt directing was enough to look after, to concentrate on how you were filming it."

While the Comic Strip movies were successful over here, he's never had a hit in the US. He did screen The Strike to people in Hollywood to see what they made of it. Inevitably, they wanted a happy ending rather than the defeat of the miners. "Truth has nothing to do with films at all," adds Richardson.

Al Pacino also features in another of his projects - a film of the BBC sketch show series Stella Street, which he directed and co-wrote. This has Phil Cornwell and John Sessions playing the famous inhabitants of an ordinary street in Surrey. Among them: Michael Caine, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and David Bowie.

Richardson has never met any of the stars who are impersonated, although word has reached him of their reactions. "We've heard very complimentary things from Caine and Bowie. And Caine's wife stopped John Sessions in the street and said they never missed an episode," he reports.

* Churchill: The Hollywood Years is available to buy on DVD from Pathe Distribution.

Published: 09/04/2005