Time for another dip into the archives. Here's another of my early Private Eye gags, this one from ten years ago this month.
Not sure the joke is still relevant. The era of reality TV and makeover shows has enabled ITV to sidestep its inability to make funny sitcoms, and it seems to make very few these days, funny or otherwise.
Drawing wise, it's not too terrible I suppose! This is from the pre-Google image search days ... so they look nothing like hyenas. They're more wolfish. And that awful "rabbit ears" aerial on top of the TV is something I would never draw now. It's a sort of "cartoon shorthand" that I used to use a lot, like mortar boards to indicate schoolteachers. I'm not sure I've even seen an aerial like that, and I've certainly never seen a teacher wear a mortar board. So I stopped doing that. I do like the picture on the wall though, of the hyenas in happier times.
One thing I do remember about this cartoon is that it originally said "second part" rather than "next episode", but the Eye suggested the change – the thinking being that "second part" is more relevant to a drama show, rather than a sitcom. Ah, the subtleties of gag cartooning. And you thought these things were just thrown together.
Cartoons by Royston