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!).
There’s Something Wrong in Paradise
By
Posted on
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…’
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.
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.
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.