Rob Carter pilots Christopher Bliss comic soap opera Bangmouth Village (original) (raw)

ExclusiveThursday 7th November 2024, 12:00pm by Jay Richardson

Bangmouth Village. Image shows left to right: Mr Knuckfist (Francis Ezekiel), Billy (Rob Carter), Jazzy (Ryan Lanes). Credit: Baby Cow Productions

Rob Carter is launching three-part comedy pilot Bangmouth Village, starring his deluded alter ego Christopher Bliss
The online series co-stars Harriet Kemsley, Justin Edwards, Edward Easton, Kellie Shirley and others
Bliss plays bad boy Billy Bangmouth, an ex-con in Shropshire seeking to reunite with an old flame

Rob Carter is piloting a comic soap opera starring his long-time character Christopher Bliss, described as "The Room meets Emmerdale on steroids".

Bangmouth Village launches today online, with deluded would-be novelist Bliss playing notorious bad boy Billy Bangmouth, freshly out of prison, seeking to reunite with an old flame and shaking up his rural Shropshire hamlet. What follows is a village-wide web of lies, adultery, drugs, violence, mystery, gossip and death. You can watch the first episode below.

Aiming to be "the best worst soap opera of all time", three 3-minute episodes will be released on successive Thursdays.

The series co-stars Harriet Kemsley, Justin Edwards, Flatmates' Grace Hogg-Robinson, Kellie Shirley (In The Long Run), Joe Barnes (Starstruck), Kyle Lima (Gavin & Stacey) and Tarot's Ed Easton.

Ostensibly written, produced and directed by Bliss, who imagines himself the greatest writer Shropshire has ever produced, Bangmouth Village is, in fact, penned by Carter, who has performed live as his alter-ego for a decade. He took the play I Spy With My Little Eye Something Beginning With Why Have You Been Sleeping With My Wife: A Play By Christopher Bliss to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2018.

Bangmouth Village is "packed full of flirting and drama and shouting and pushing and all the things we love soap operas for, and the plot twists are genuinely shocking, but it's all come from the brain of a complete idiot," Carter explained to British Comedy Guide. "The dialogue doesn't fit the action, the casting is way off, the characters change their minds impossibly quickly, non sequiturs are rife and people keep leaving the scene to go to the toilet - Christopher's go-to way of getting a character to exit."

The series is "a deeply absurd mix of deadpan commitment to badly executed genre tropes, and unapologetic laugh-a-minute silliness. Humour comes from strong-but-wrong decisions on the dialogue, acting, costume, props, set, and even camera movements. The whole show radiates his off-kilter, misguided energy, his total commitment to intense drama, and his surprisingly endearing lack of awareness of how the world really works.

"Christopher clearly has very little knowledge or life experience of anything outside his own Shropshire village, but he believes in himself, and has confidently announced himself as the worst storyteller the world has ever seen. It's the car crash we can't stop looking at."

Bangmouth Village. Image shows left to right: Wendy (Kellie Shirley), Michael (Justin Edwards). Credit: Baby Cow Productions

Carter added: "I'm obsessed with heroic failures. Things like the Fyre Festival, that Willy Wonka Experience in Glasgow, Rebecca Black's Friday, The Room [film], the Monkey Jesus [restored painting] ... That idea has always been the inspiration for Christopher. We've tried to put it out as he would put it out.

"I found [early 1990s BBC soap opera] Eldorado really fun and instructive to watch. But this is not a spoof of soap operas as such. We wanted to turn failure into an artform."

Shot in May, the short-form series is directed by Big Red Button, AKA Johnny Burns and Pier Van Tijn, who helmed Kiell Smith-Bynoe's Channel 4 sketch pilot Red Flag and Emma Sidi's telenovela spoof La Princesa De Woking.

Matt Bell, whose production credits include Meet The Richardsons and Things You Should Have Done, is Bangmouth Village's producer for Baby Cow Productions (This Time With Alan Partridge, Red Flag) and Blink Productions (Don't Hug Me I'm Scared), with Carter and Baby Cow's Rupert Majendie among the executive producers.

Pierre Bergman, Rajesh Kahlhan, Ryan Lane, Harrison Dadswell and Francis Ezekiel round out the cast.

"I haven't collaborated much as Christopher but it's been great working with Big Red Button," Carter said. "They can see possibilities with it that I couldn't see."

Ultimately, the character comic, who appeared in sitcoms such as Peep Show and Fresh Meat, hopes to expand the Bangmouth Village "world" for television. But right now, he hopes "it finds its audience, then naturally opportunities will arise for us to make more. There's no end to where it could go.

Bangmouth Village. Image shows left to right: Nigel Police (Kyle Lima), Gemima (Grace Hogg-Robinson)

"A lot of the humour comes from the other actors playing it straight. The only problem with this production is Christopher. Despite being rife with badly conceived ideas and obvious inconsistencies, the series looks totally slick and professional, creating an absurd comic paradox.

"I like having questions unanswered. Like, 'why the hell have all these actors agreed to do this? Who funded it and thought it was a good idea? Where on Earth are these crazy storylines leading to?' The huge discrepancy between Christopher's opinion of himself and the actual end result - that gap is basically the core of all character comedy."

Carter has further storylines in mind, "an idea of the world mapped out in my head". And "there are definitely deaths, marriages and babies coming. And any number of cameos we could have".

However, he maintains that the series needs to "tread a fine line between good and bad. It can't be complete nonsense because a bad story wouldn't be entertaining.

"The earliest version I wrote of this were 20-second episodes, just twist after twist after twist. It was a bit much. So the interesting question is: How much is too much?"