MrBiffo

HAPPY BIRTHDAY 'MY PARENTS ARE ALIENS'...!

Added 2024-11-10 11:37:56 +0000 UTC

This week marked 25 years of My Parents Are Aliens. I came onto the show in its fourth series, with an episode called Fish Fingers. I’d been recommended after writing on two series of Sooty, and I ended up writing until the end of the series. Heck: I wrote what turned out to be the final episode. It wasn't meant to be the final ep - but ITV stopped making all kids' shows, which brought things to an abrupt end.

The final series had introduced a new cast of kids, and completely changed the main location. The new dynamics didn’t really work, and the location – the family home – was redesigned to look more alien and less real, which had been what grounded the show originally. I learned a lesson from that; whenever we lost a main cast member on 4 O’Clock Club I fought for us replacing like-for-like, so it didn’t break the format.

There was a reunion on Saturday, though I didn’t go. I was in Lincolnshire, being a grandad, but I’ve been enjoying seeing the photos in the Whatsapp group. To be honest, I’m not quite at a point where I really feel up to socialising yet… plus there were no other writers going – so I’d have felt a bit like a spare part amid all the cast and crew who showed up. I got to know Tony and Carla – aka Brian and Sophie – a bit, and we’re friends on Facebook, but never had much to do with anybody else outside of the writing team.

The series was a joy to work on back in the day. It was really groundbreaking – and though I guess Sooty was technically my big break, it was MPAA that really gave me a career in kids TV.

The show’s genius was really down to its creator Andy Watts, who taught me an enormous amount about writing. The format was the closest the UK has ever gotten to its own Simpsons, dealing with big themes in a way that was incredibly funny. Thanks to there being two aliens at the heart of the show, we could get away with so much.

In my first episode I had the dad, Brian, kill a goldfish by feeding it a full English breakfast. In a later episode he started his own religion so that he could be worshipped – going around hitting people over the head with his ‘bible’ if they didn’t do so. We skewered capitalism, charities, celebrity… for a ‘kids’ show it was very grown up.

It’s strange to think back on that time though; so long ago, a different life completely. I was very new as a writer, very raw. I was naive and blind to a lot of the politics that I can now see were swirling around. Having taken my knocks, I now know that TV isn't quite the industry I thought it was. That naivety was good in a lot of ways.

I think I’m a better writer these days, but back then I thought anything was possible – now I have to fight against the constraints of what I know. Not knowing everything, creatively-speaking, is incredibly empowering and freeing. Over time I guess I’ve come to second-guess what I’ll be told I can’t so in a script. I fight against it, but it does mean I’ve become slightly less instinctive and more technical as a writer.

Anyway. Thanks, MPAA. You were great.

If you're interested, here are some of my eps:

WRONGS OF PRAISE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AfHuL8fyJw&t=196s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgY_as7UdCw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ddsNcnGt0o

BRIAN'S ARK

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX40jZHjkns&t=176s

ANORAKNOPHOBIA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do5lofkPS4w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty-rFJuRLCI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jC6nVripao