I randomly opened my Radio Times Guide To TV Comedy this morning, and saw the entry for Pallas. It was a Channel 4 show, created by Geoff Atkinson and Kim Fuller, that utilised stock footage of the British Royal Family, dubbed by the same people who voiced Spitting Image.
And would you believe it, the whole damn thing is available on the Tubes.
Here’s a weird little promo for it though.
As you can see it was done in the same style as Staggering Stories Of Ferdinand De Bargos, in five minutes chunks that aired on weekdays in the early 1990s.
And if you don’t know what that was, it was this.
Made by pretty much the same crew as Pallas, this one aired on BBC Two from the end of 1989 to 1995.
There seemed to be a lot of these types of shows on around that time. I can see why, they are cheap, and effective when done well.
The Flashing Blade was redubbed from the original French series, using scripts written by Russell T Davies, and aired on Saturday mornings during On The Waterfront in 1988.
In 1993 the Pallas team used the same format again for The Almost Complete History Of The 20th Century, this time for a late night Channel 4 slot. Apparently David Starkey was a consultant for this.
They all reunited once more in 1997, to make Klinik, dubbing a Dutch medical soap opera, as part of Channel 4’s Doctors And Nurses strand.
