Monkey Dust: Britain's Darkest TV show?

The late 1990's and early 2000's are heralded as halcyon days but beyond the spin the UK had plenty of problems, which were mercilessly highlighted by one of the darkest TV shows ever, Monkey Dust

Fiendishly funny: BBC comedy Monkey Dust, written by Harry Thompson and Shaun Pye, was one of the darkest British TV shows and featured a cavalcade of horrific characters.

GREAT Britain is broken, full of lying politicians, weirdos, clueless terrorists and the out of touch middle-class, all of whom are failed by a crumbling NHS. Sound familiar? But this isn't the UK in 2025, it’s a bleak diagnosis of the fondly remembered late 1990’s and early 2000’s by nightmarish TV show, Monkey Dust. Written by Harry Thompson and Shaun Pye, this animated comedy was a shocking, fearless and caustic view of blighty that shone an unflinching light on the sickest corners of this funny island.

We’re riding a wave of 90’s nostalgia with endless articles lionising the carefree decade and comparing it to our doom-laden current period. Even the Gallagher brothers, Noel and Liam, have put aside their differences to reform Oasis. In comparison to the multi-headed hydra of problems facing us now, it was a simpler, stable and more positive time after the fall of the Berlin Wall, emergence of Britpop and the Cold War's end. But here’s the problem: it was obsessed with image. While British manufacturing went bust the PR industry boomed and spin doctors prowled the corridors of power to carefully control the New Labour government’s image. Underneath the glossy façade of Cool Britannia and Girl Power, the country’s problems remained.

Debuting in February 2003 on BBC3, this blackest of comedies ran for three outrageously offensive but hilarious seasons. It featured animated sketches, made by a variety of companies, depicting the weirder and perverse side of British society. Scenes flowed seamlessly into each other and episodes ended with a nocturnal revisit to the characters as they lay in bed at night, haunted by the horror of their lives. Tying this all together were tracks from some of the coolest bands of the era, including Goldfrapp and Eels, to create an uncomfortably cohesive picture of the UK suffering a severe post-90’s comedown.

Unlike Spitting Image, which savagely lampooned the famous, its sclerotic gaze largely focused on the British public to examine society through a pantheon of perverts and oddballs. This included wrongly imprisoned man-child Ivan Dobsky, dubbed the ‘Meat-Safe Murderer’ for a killing in the 1970’s despite saying ‘he never done it'. Clive Pringle used the plots of movies and songs as cover for his sordid sexual encounters to his long-suffering wife. There was also the internet chat room paedophile whose efforts to meet young girls were (thankfully) thwarted. These ghouls painted a seedy counterpoint to the upper-class sheen portrayed by Richard Curtis’s movies.

Monkey Dust mercilessly mocked the nation’s obsession with the new and the pseudo-intellectual, which manifested in public bodies wasting millions of pounds to pointlessly rebrand themselves. The show’s putrid PR firm, Labia, reimagined the Fire Service as ‘Icarus’ - which provided refreshments to onlookers instead of putting out fires - and disconcertingly renamed cancer as ‘Closure’. Reflecting the times, it parodied the gurus and TV producers which topped society. This included the Controller, a dome headed media mogul who hid behind clever jargon while creating exploitative reality programme ‘People on the Toilet’. Embracing the vacuous times were the Yuppies, a collection of insufferable middle-class couples obsessed with their own self-importance which at times veered into wife-swapping and cannibalism. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Tony Blair was a haunting presence, spouting a mix of actual and outlandish promises while sad music played and the camera surveyed the decrepit state of the country. 

The Paedo-Finder General would kill innocents he accused of child abuse with the power invested in him by baseless media speculation.

Never afraid to tackle society’s taboos, the show’s creators gleefully catapulted over the line of what is acceptable into the shocking. For example, the character Fran Chapell explored how the pursuit of fame can take a dark turn as she parlayed her daughter’s disappearance into celebrity, which shared some similarities to the Shannon Matthews case several years later. The ghoulish Paedo-Finder General made fun of the child abuse hysteria sparked by the tabloid press, which led to innocent members of the public being attacked. The most controversial topic was the rising fear of homegrown terrorism following the September 11 attacks in New York. Monkey Dust responded with the incompetent terrorists, three half-hearted Black Country suicide bombers more interested in West Bromwich Albion, Findus Crispy Pancakes and Stars in their Eyes than actually killing anyone.

Tragedy struck months after the final season was broadcast in February 2005 when Thompson died of lung cancer, leaving a legacy of one of the darkest British TV programmes ever, which had garnered critical praise and a cult following. But the 7/7 attack in London by Islamist suicide bombers ensured a black comedy featuring silly Jihadis was left in limbo. Only the first season was ever released on DVD and all episodes have been removed from BBC iPlayer, but rather fittingly for 'forbidden' content it can be found on the internet archive while clips are available on YouTube. There's no doubt some of the humour has aged badly but the show went out of its way to offend everyone and provoke a reaction. It is best considered a mix of Pandora's Box and a time capsule, holding all the ills of a well-remembered time. Strangely, the doom-laden vision has seeped into a surprising place: right wing newspaper opinion columns, which hyperbolically bemoan the country’s decline and have a very different mission. If there's a lesson, it's to resist the allure of nostalgia and look beyond the spin. Monkey Dust had just one job which it performed to perfidious perfection: to shatter the glossy PR facade of the late 90's and early 00's with a sledgehammer.

Further reading

• This article from Vice magazine's website is a good read about Monkey Dust.

• All episodes of Monkey Dust can be found on the Way Back Machine.