''Tomorrow, Today!'' was a radio

sitcom A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use ne ...

written by

Christopher William Hill Christopher William Hill is a British playwright and children's novelist. Early life Christopher William Hill was born in Truro, Cornwall. Career His series of children's novels, ''Tales From Schwartzgarten'', is published by Orchard Books, an ...

, broadcast on

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...

between 2006 and 2008. It is itself a spoof of radio

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

dramas of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The writer is

. The sitcom takes place in a BBC studio in 1961, where a group of "bright young things" and aging actors produce a futuristic drama set in the year 2006, containing space flight, ray guns, and contact with aliens. The lead roles are played by Nigel Lavery ( Peter Bowles) and Sylvia Hann ( Cheryl Campbell) who hate their jobs only slightly more than they hate each other. Their off-mike conversations are laced with carping comments and innuendo about each other's long-lost youth and popularity. Sylvia was once the voice of " Listen with Mother". The "comic relief" for the radio production is provided by a stereotypical Welshman, "Taffy" Jones, played by a non-Welsh actor, Douglas Bennings ( Jon Glover). Both series are regularly rebroadcast on

Radio 4 Extra BBC Radio 4 Extra (formerly BBC Radio 7) is a British Digital radio in the United Kingdom, digital radio broadcasting, radio station from the BBC, broadcasting archived repeats of comedy, drama and documentary programmes nationally, 24 hours a ...

Plot

The show is about to be terminated, much to the relief of the leads who are contractually committed to it. However ,the BBC decides that thanks to the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

's apparent lead in space travel, national morale requires it to continue with a new pro-British, anti-Soviet slant. Writer and producer Hugo Kellerman (

Joseph Kloska Joseph Anthony Kloska (born 1983) is an English actor. He began his career in radio, moving on to work in television, theatre, and film. Life Named after a Polish grandfather, Teofil Joseph Kloska, who had settled in England, Kloska was brought ...

) introduces new aliens with a Communist philosophy and has them do battle with his heroes. BBC executive Godfrey Winnard ( John Fortune) watches over the new production and keeps adding new elements to the mix, such as a member of the

Royal Shakespeare Company The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs over 1,000 staff and produces around 20 productions a year. The RSC plays regularly in London, St ...

( Leslie Phillips) brought in to play an

android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

. In the second series, set in 1962, Hugo is commissioned to devise a science fiction series for children's television and, thanks to a series of mishaps on the way to Television Centre, has the idea for "Professor Fabula and the Diloks", featuring a scientist who travels through time and space in a police call box, accompanied by a robotic dog. However, the idea is squelched due to salacious interpretations of the Professor's status as a single man wandering in time and space with a dog. In the final episode of the second series, the entire production relocates to Wales as the

Cuban Missile Crisis The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis (of 1962) ( es, Crisis de Octubre) in Cuba, the Caribbean Crisis () in Russia, or the Missile Scare, was a 35-day (16 October – 20 November 1962) confrontation between the United S ...

threatens to cause a holocaust. There they discover that Jones, killed off and replaced by an equally stereotypical Scot (also voiced by Douglas) was immensely popular among the locals. Faced with mobs of angry Welsh fans calling him "Taffy killer", Hugo writes in a resurrection for the character, but Douglas's "more authentic" reading of the part causes the disgusted locals to cut power to the studio, which the team interprets as the arrival of Armageddon.

External links

* *{{British Comedy Guide, radio, tomorrow_today BBC Radio comedy programmes BBC Radio 4 programmes 2006 radio programme debuts Fiction set in 2006