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1999 British television sitcom
Dark Ages
is a British television
sitcom
, first broadcast as five thirty-minute episodes on
ITV
in December 1999. It portrayed medieval English villagers fearful of the turn of the new (
second
) millennium in the year 999 AD, and parodied contemporary fears at the turn of the
third millennium
(such as the
Millennium Bug
) in 1999. It was written by
Rob Grant
and directed by
Steve Bendelack
.
Production
[
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]
Dark Ages
was created by Merle Nygate in 1996 and commissioned by
Granada Television
for development. Producer Justin Judd and Nygate could not make the concept work for an
ITV
audience, so Nygate was replaced by
Rob Grant
, better known for writing
Red Dwarf
for
BBC Two
. Grant's new scripts for
Dark Ages
were described by Judd as being more suited for a BBC Two audience, and Grant was required to alter them accordingly. Though a lot of scenes featuring computer-generated effects were required,
Dark Ages
still had a regular sitcom budget of no more than £200,000. Location filming of the village was done for a week at
West Stow Anglo-Saxon village
in
Suffolk
. Production then moved into a studio for five weeks between April and May 1999 to film scenes in front of a live audience.
[1]
The costume designer was inspired by the works of
Bruegel
and from research visits to the
Jorvik Viking Centre
. She created some costumes from scratch, using vegetable dyes from the era depicted, and re-used some from other productions. In post-production, the video was "
filmized
" to improve the production standards.
[1]
Episodes
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]
- Vile Vole Pie
- Vikings
- War
- Witch
- The End of the World
Cast
[
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]
Guests
[
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]
References
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]
External links
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]
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Television
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Radio
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Novels
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Rob Grant solo
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Doug Naylor solo
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Related
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