Phoenix Nights: 25 years of Peter Kay’s record-breaking, unparalleled TV comedy | television

THere are some British comedy shows that were popular, but are now all but extinct, such as Phoenix Nights. The sitcom – which ran for just two series between 2001 and 2002 – is set in a fictional working men’s club in Bolton, and has been a huge hit in the age of physical media. Its second series was the fastest selling TV show ever in the UK on DVD, with 160,000 copies sold in its first week of release. However, it has now been 25 years since it was first broadcast on Channel 4, and it has never been shown on any streaming service ever. Instead, it’s limited to dodgy uploads by fans on YouTube and the used DVD market. It is also completely absent from almost all major publications’ lists of the best TV shows of the 21st century.

However, it is still a program like few others. The Northern and working class clearly use neither as the subject of their jokes. In the same way that the Royal family transformed the daily routine of watching TV, bickering, drinking, and asking each other what they had for tea into a funny and poignant shared living room experience, Phoenix Nights invites people through its shimmering curtains into the club’s familiar but faded glory.

The show is a spin-off of an episode of the 1999 mockumentary series That Peter Kay Thing, and was written by Kay, Dave Spikey, and Neil Fitzmaurice. Kay stars as Brian Potter, a moody, acerbic but very funny club owner who, when he’s not busy being a constant cheapskate, can be found rolling around the club in his wheelchair filling his whiskey glass – a flower vase, so he can reach the optics on the top shelf.

It’s full of eccentric characters, fascinating details and sharp-eyed observations, material plucked straight from smoke-filled bingo halls and dilapidated function rooms. A world of wraparound sandwiches in broad daylight, people resting on coffin lids, fruit machines whizzing away, clashing with blaring televisions, the clacking of billiard balls, and idle chatting with regular customers. Over the course of 12 episodes, the club encounters a drunken horse during a Wild West night, and guest spots from Catchphrase’s Roy Walker and Bullseye’s Jim Bowen. There’s also a children’s playground designed around a portable toilet and scaffolding in the car park, with a poorly disguised adult-style bouncy castle.

While the show has become synonymous with its most famous star – Kay also plays one half of the bumbling bouncer duo, Max and Paddy, with Paddy McGuinness – it’s actually an ensemble comedy that succeeds because of the eclectic characters that fill the club. There’s Ray Vaughn (Fitzmaurice), the enthusiastic DJ, the elusive electrician and the rumored murderer; Gerry St Clair (Speake), the long-suffering club member who finds himself singing about rubbish bags at Asda; compulsive liar Kenny Senior (Archie Kelly); hapless fortune teller Clinton Baptiste (Alex Lowe); Holy Mary (Janice Connolly), the strict Catholic waitress at the club; and the obnoxious, cigar-chewing Den Perry (Ted Robbins), Potter’s arch-enemy and owner of the rival club. Phoenix Nights is an intimate and limited sitcom, but full of the unique characters that make up the club’s mix community.

One character, Keith Lard – an overworked fire safety officer who is rumored to be involved in sex with dogs – got the show into trouble. Real-life Bolton fire safety officer Keith Laird complained and was awarded compensation, forcing Channel 4 to issue an apology despite Kay’s insistence that the character is fictional.

Understandably, for a quarter-century-old show about a working men’s club — a culture that peaked decades ago — there’s some material that wouldn’t be published today. The quality of the second series declined noticeably and the poor writing choice of two problematic Chinese immigrant characters led to well-deserved criticism, even from a member of its own cast. Stand-up comedian Daniel Kitson, who played Spencer’s bartender, called the show “lazy and racist.”

Such opinions have undoubtedly affected the show’s reputation and legacy, with Kay recently saying that he didn’t want to show it on streaming sites like Netflix because it would likely need a content warning these days. However, in retrospect, the series is softer and more complex at its core than the broader TV comedy landscape of the 2000s. In an era when blackface was still a thing, sexism was rampant, and many shows were rooted in bad shaming and cruel demonization, Phoenix Nights offered, for the most part, a comforting antidote.

It’s certainly flawed, but it remains an anomaly in British television. It has carved out a unique space in a corner of the comedy world — in terms of region, class and content — that major broadcast stations often shun. Twenty-five years later, with frustratingly declining numbers of working-class people working in and on television, the comedy show that seemed like a one-off at the time is still around. So perhaps it’s time to visit your local charity shop to see if you can find the DVD of this increasingly forgotten gem.