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There’s Something Wrong in Paradise

ABSOLUTELY DIRE musical comedy vehicle for evergreen band KID CREOLE AND THE COCONUTS, who find themselves washed up on a tropical island with a revolutionary government but still find room to crowbar in “Annie, I’m Not Your Daddy” and “Stool Pigeon” (ha cha cha chaaaa!).

4 Comments

4 Comments

  1. Tom Ronson

    March 31, 2022 at 4:34 pm

    The title reminds me of The Two Ronnies’ ‘you couldn’t do that now’ spoof of Kid Creole and the Coconuts, with a blacked-up Ronnie Barker singing ‘Something’s wrong, me parrot’s died…’

  2. George White

    October 21, 2022 at 3:21 pm

    This is a peculiar special – part of a strange wave of pseudo-American on-VT plays/specials churned out around this time.
    Features both Karen and Pauline Black as the white and black love interests, respectively.

    See also A Talent for Murder (1984 – BBC TWO/Showtime) and Mr. Halpern and Mr. Johnson (1983 – HTV/C4/HBO) – both American-set hourlong special playlets for Lord Olivier, shot on VT with OB exteriors in wet provincial locations doubling as upstate New York (the latter turning some Somerset farmland into a NY Jewish cemetery) with Angela Lansbury
    and Jackie Gleason respectively playing variants on Jessica Fletcher (well, a very different kind of mystery novelist) and Ralph Kramden. In Mr. Halpern, Olivier does a Jewish voice that is more Frank Spencer than anything.

    Also the BBC’s partly-VTed Fauxmerican epics Oppenheimer and Nancy Astor.

  3. Richardpd

    October 21, 2022 at 10:45 pm

    There have been a few strange vehicle projects over the years, this sounding like one of the stranger ones.

  4. Glenn Aylett

    October 22, 2022 at 12:09 pm

    It was weird, you had King Creole singing his hits alongside the actor who played Tony Carpenter in Eastenders playing a racist Carribean dictator. Also being studio bound made it look like something from the sixties than 1983, as most ITV dramas were location based by then.

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