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Nighty Night

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For the EP by 8in8, see Nighty Night (EP).

Nighty Night
GenreSitcom
Dark comedy
Comedy-drama
Surreal humour
Horror
Created byJulia Davis
Written by
Directed byTony Dow
Dewi Humpfreys
StarringJulia Davis
Rebecca Front
Angus Deayton
Kevin Eldon
Ruth Jones
Mark Gatiss
Felicity Montagu
Michael Fenton Stevens
Country of originUnited Kingdom
No. of series2
No. of episodes12
Production
Executive producersHenry Normal
Steve Coogan
Producers
Running time30 minutes
Production companyBaby Cow Productions
Original release
NetworkBBC Three
Release6 January 2004 (2004-01-06) –
11 October 2005 (2005-10-11)

Nighty Night is a BBC black comedy[1][2] television sitcom starring Julia Davis. It was first broadcast on 6 January 2004 on BBC Three.

Notorious for its dark humour, the show follows narcissistic sociopath Jill Tyrell (Julia Davis) alongside her moronic personal assistant Linda (Ruth Jones). Jill learns that her husband Terry (Kevin Eldon) has cancer. She uses this to manipulate new neighbour Cathy Cole (Rebecca Front), who suffers from MS, and her husband Don (Angus Deayton), a doctor and the man with whom Jill becomes increasingly obsessed.

Production

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The theme tune used in the beginning of both series and during the closing credits for the first is an excerpt from the Spaghetti Western My Name Is Nobody, composed by the Italian film composer Ennio Morricone. Parts of the show were filmed in the Surrey town of Dorking and the village of Cobham, the latter includes the cul-de-sac where Jill and the Coles live.

Cast and characters

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Main cast

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Supporting cast

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Plot

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First series

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Immediately after her husband begins cancer treatment, Jill goes to a dating agency to find another man, seemingly content in the knowledge that her husband will shortly die. Jill uses her status as widow (despite Terry being still alive) to gain sympathy from her neighbours and co-workers. Don is a family doctor and his wife Cathy has multiple sclerosis and often uses a wheelchair. Using the pretence of caring for Cathy, Jill gradually moves in with them, flirting with their son David and trying to break up their marriage and sleep with Don, all the while playing the sympathy card with Cathy.

When Jill finds out Terry is recovering, she admits him to a hospice and tells all her friends that he has died, and stages a twisted funeral where she gets all the attention. Terry leaves the hospice and finds his way home. Jill imprisons him in a spare room and begins starving and brutalising him, but explains she is doing it only to aid his recovery.

Cathy and Don put forward their plans to move to Hopperton, a Christian retreat with a high population of lesbians. When Jill hears of this she throws a farewell coffee morning for them, livening it up by performing a pole dance routine, whilst the neighbours watch in horror. After the party Jill, realising she must be rid of Terry once and for all, runs upstairs and smothers him with a cushion.

Three weeks pass, and Jill has moved in with the wealthy but dimwitted Glen at his mansion. One morning, Jill goes downstairs to find Glen has invited Gordon, the local vicar and friend of Jill, to arrange a wedding. Jill realises she is about to be found out, so confesses to murdering her husband to Glen. She puts poison in dishes of Angel Delight and encourages Gordon to eat some. As he chokes on it, she tells Glen that if he loves her he would agree to take the blame for Gordon's and Terry's deaths and persuades him to make a telephone confession to the police. This done, Jill suggests that they both commit suicide by eating the Angel Delight, and he gives in to her persuasion. When it is her turn to eat the Angel Delight, she declares, "I'm not really hungry". The poison takes effect and Glen drops to the floor.

With Glen having taken the blame for Gordon and Terry's deaths, Jill rings Don.

Second series

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Glen has survived Jill's attempt to kill him, but having confessed to killing Terry and Gordon, he is incarcerated in a secure unit for the criminally insane. Realising that she must inherit Glen's money to fund her pursuit of Don, she agrees to marry him and then begins a campaign to kill him. Jill steals a caravan from Linda and pursues Don to Bude, Cornwall, where he and Cathy are trying fix their marriage at a New-Age retreat called The Trees. En route to The Trees, they accidentally run over Floella Umbagabe, a therapist planning to work at the retreat. They store her body in their caravan and Jill assumes Floella's identity to gain access to the centre.

When Cathy reveals she is pregnant with Don's baby and that he will be having a vasectomy, Jill realises her chances of securing him permanently are running out, so she tries to obtain a semen sample from Don prior to surgery. Ultimately unsuccessful, she tries to seduce Cathy and Don's 12-year-old son Bruce, and when he does not respond she claims to his parents that he raped her and she is pregnant by him.

Meanwhile, Glen has tunnelled his way out of his cell and has tracked Jill to Cornwall; Floella Umbagabe has recovered and arrived at The Trees, exposing Jill as a fraud.

The story flashes forward 11 months. Cathy has given birth to her baby Abigail. Don tells Sue that he wants to move to Spain with her to start a new life. Jill overhears and assumes Don is talking about her. Glen finds Jill and threatens to kill her. Convincing him that she's pregnant with his baby, Jill once again deceives Glen into submission.

After Jill's lies are once again exposed, she is chased to a cliff, where Cathy confronts her about her fake pregnancy and her repeated attempts to seduce Don. They begin to fight while Don and Sue have sex on the rocks below. Cath's wheelchair is hurled off the cliff, killing Sue just before Cathy pushes Jill off the cliff. Her fall is broken by a trampoline, and then by Don. Cathy is arrested and taken away by the police, while Jill rides off in a speed boat with Don and Glen.

International broadcast

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In Australia, this programme commenced airing on ABC TV each Wednesday at 9pm from 23 March 2005.[4]

Reception

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The first series won a Banff Award and Davis won a Royal Television Society Award for her performance and got a highly positive reception from TV critics. It also received a nomination for the BAFTA TV Award for Best Situation Comedy in 2005.[5]

The Guardian called it "an exquisitely vile comic creation" and adding that "The Office might have popularised the comedy of embarrassment, but Nighty Night has moved it on."[6] The Times called it "a blistering wall of superbly unredeemed cruelty that manages to trample over every social convention in a pair of cheap stilettos."[7]

In viewership, while no data was reported for the first series, the second series began strongly with 616,000 viewers - BBC Three's second-highest rated show of the week. Ratings slipped sharply from thereon, however, with the final two episodes registering fewer than 400,000 viewers and falling outside of the channel's top 10 shows both weeks.[8]

US version

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In June 2006 it was announced that Sex and the City creator Darren Star would write and be executive producer of a US version, which has been commissioned for a pilot script. Steve Coogan and Henry Normal, founders of the production company Baby Cow, were to be co-executive-producers.[9]

References

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  1. ^ Hawker, Phillipa (18 November 2005). "Nighty Night review". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 3 May 2016. In this confronting English black comedy, writer Julia Davis stars as her unnerving, unhinged creation, Jill Tyrell.
  2. ^ Pfarr, Jodie (23 August 2007). "Black, Tasteless, Yet Terribly Funny – TV & Radio – Entertainment". The Age. Retrieved 3 May 2016. This pitch-black comedy is certainly not everybody's cup of tea
  3. ^ a b Guide, British Comedy. "Nighty Night - BBC3 Sitcom". British Comedy Guide.
  4. ^ "Program summary: Nighty Night (episode one)". ABC Television. Retrieved 6 January 2011.
  5. ^ "Nighty Night (2004–2005) Awards". IMDb. Retrieved 30 March 2020.
  6. ^ McLean, Gareth (19 April 2004). "Will Nighty Night change the sitcom for ever?". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 August 2011.
  7. ^ Armstrong, Stephen (7 March 2004). "The new queen of darkness". The Times. Retrieved 17 August 2011.[dead link](subscription required)
  8. ^ "Weekly top 10 programmes on TV sets (July 1998 – Sept 2018) [select appropriate channels/date]". BARB. Retrieved 22 April 2023.
  9. ^ "'Nighty Night' Comes to the U.S." Hollywood.com. 12 June 2006. Retrieved 30 March 2020.
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