A Kick Up the Eighties A Kick Up the Eighties A Kick Up the Eighties was a 1981-1984 BBC 2 sketch show starring Robbie Coltrane, Tracey Ullman, Richard Stilgoe, Miriam Margolyes, Rik Mayall, Ron Bain and Roger Sloman. The series was created by Tom Gutteridge (producer/director) and Sean Hardie (executive producer). Colin Gilbert was script editor. The show was the first break into television for Rik Mayall, who played the anorak-wearing investigative reporter Kevin Turvey; it was also the start of Tracey Ullman's television comedy career. Peter Capaldi, a trained graphic artist from Scotland, contributed to designing the show's opening sequence prior to launching his
The Sketch Show were recreated, such as the California Dreamin', English Course and the Sign Language sketch. A famous sketch on the American version had Grammer waking up from a nightmare, which he describes as: "I dreamt that "Frasier" was over, and I was on this Sketch Show!" The sketch is a spoof of the "Newhart" series finale, in which Bob Newhart woke up and realised that the whole series was all a dream, which was itself a spoof of Pam Ewing of the television soap opera "Dallas" waking up and declaring that the entire ninth season was just a dream so that