Susie

Fifteen minutes in and hadn't spotted a joke. Plus points are Dawn French looking really quite svelte as the village school mistress / bike and Peter Richardson trying to be a Rick out of the Young Ones. The wooden acting seems to be intentional. Thirty minutes in and still hadn't laughed but I guess that is what was alternative about it. Location is nice though. Looks like an early draft of Les Dogs later on. Has the same sort of surreal atmosphere at times but they did it better in the later episode with more laughs.

Susie or Far from the Madding Crowd. Susie Darling (Dawn French) is a sexually frustrated village schoolteacher with a dull boring husband called Martin (Adrian Edmondson.)

So Susie skips school early to get a bit of regular nookie with Dave (Nigel Planer.) He still lives in a trailer with his alcoholic mum Lorna (Jennifer Saunders.)

Only Susie's head is turned when a wealthy impulsive, easily bored former pop star Gary (Peter Richardson) buys a nearby mansion. Susie has a quick affair and then dumps both Martin and Dave for a bit of rhythm music.

Unfortunately Gary is not the sticking around kind.

This is the typical uneven episode of The Comic Strip Presents. There are some good ideas here, such as the shallow pop star spending money like water with daft ideas.

The rather insular dull village life where there is a lot of adultery in the back of vans. It was just not that funny.

This one hasn't really aged gracefully. It's strictly for die hard Comic Strip/Young Ones fans. Dawn portrays the... ahem... titular role of Suzie. She's a primary school teacher who's primarily a "Village Bike" in this episode. Adrian Edmondson is her long-suffering husband who also happens to be an insufferable bore. This is arguably the most pathetic character Ade has ever portrayed. He's in Neil Pye mode, but even Neil has more confidence than this guy. Suzie is having an affair with with Nigel Planer's working class character who shares a caravan with his Mum (Jennifer Saunders). Things get more complicated when a young, yet eccentric muso (Peter Richardson) moves into the area and Suzie finds herself falling into a love quadrangle. In a nutshell, Adrian is the funniest thing about this episode and Peter has his moments. The best bit is between Dawn and Ade at the end of the episode... but I don't wanna spoil it for ya.