| Genre | Sitcom |
|---|---|
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Language(s) | English |
| Home station | BBC Radio 4 |
| Starring | Jim Field Smith Ben Willbond Katherine Jakeways Miranda Raison |
| Written by | Jim Field Smith Ben Willbond |
| Produced by | David Tyler |
| Narrated by | Jonathan Ryland |
| Original release | 20 October 2005 – 31 May 2007 |
| No. of series | 2 |
| No. of episodes | 8 |
| Website | BBC Homepage |
Deep Trouble is a BBC radio comedy series, written by and starring Jim Field Smith and Ben Willbond, which first aired on BBC Radio 4 in October 2005.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters are at Broadcasting House in Westminster, London, and it is the world's oldest national broadcasting organisation and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees. It employs over 22,000 staff in total, more than 16,000 of whom are in public sector broadcasting. The total number of staff is 35,402 when part-time, flexible, and fixed-contract staff are included.
Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitter connected to an antenna which radiates the waves, and received by a radio receiver connected to another antenna. Radio is very widely used in modern technology, in radio communication, radar, radio navigation, remote control, remote sensing and other applications. In radio communication, used in radio and television broadcasting, cell phones, two-way radios, wireless networking and satellite communication among numerous other uses, radio waves are used to carry information across space from a transmitter to a receiver, by modulating the radio signal in the transmitter. In radar, used to locate and track objects like aircraft, ships, spacecraft and missiles, a beam of radio waves emitted by a radar transmitter reflects off the target object, and the reflected waves reveal the object's location. In radio navigation systems such as GPS and VOR, a mobile receiver receives radio signals from navigational radio beacons whose position is known, and by precisely measuring the arrival time of the radio waves the receiver can calculate its position on Earth. In wireless radio remote control devices like drones, garage door openers, and keyless entry systems, radio signals transmitted from a controller device control the actions of a remote device.
In a modern sense, comedy is a genre of fiction that refers to any discourse or work generally intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, television, film, stand-up comedy, books and novels or any other medium of entertainment. The origins of the term are found in Ancient Greece. In the Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was influenced by the political satire performed by the comic poets at the theaters. The theatrical genre of Greek comedy can be described as a dramatic performance which pits two groups or societies against each other in an amusing agon or conflict. Northrop Frye depicted these two opposing sides as a "Society of Youth" and a "Society of the Old." A revised view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a relatively powerless youth and the societal conventions that pose obstacles to his hopes. In this struggle, the youth is understood to be constrained by his lack of social authority, and is left with little choice but to take recourse in ruses which engender very dramatic irony which provokes laughter.
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It takes place in the year 2012, aboard HMS Goliath, a Royal Navy stealth nuclear submarine, and follows the trials and tribulations of the submarine's chaotic crew, underneath their inept commanding officer, Captain Paul Wade (played by Jim Field Smith) and his officers Lieutenant Trainor, Weapons Officer (played by Ben Willbond), Commander Alison Fairbanks, second-in-command (played by Katherine Jakeways). The series has also included a fourth regular character - in season one only this was Petty Officer Lucy Radcliffe (played by Miranda Raison) and in season two this was Alice Barry, Computer and Weapons Expert (played by Alice Lowe).
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by the English kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against the Kingdom of France. The modern Royal Navy traces its origins to the early 16th century; the oldest of the UK's armed services, it is known as the Senior Service.
A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability. It is also sometimes used historically or colloquially to refer to remotely operated vehicles and robots, as well as medium-sized or smaller vessels, such as the midget submarine and the wet sub. Submarines are referred to as "boats" rather than "ships" irrespective of their size.
Jim Field Smith is an English film and television director, writer and producer.
The series parodies several features of the submarine genre established by The Hunt for Red October and Crimson Tide and as such its announcer is a version of Tom Clancy.
The Hunt for Red October is a 1990 American submarine spy-thriller film directed by John McTiernan, produced by Mace Neufeld, and starring Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Scott Glenn, James Earl Jones, and Sam Neill. The film is an adaptation of Tom Clancy's 1984 bestselling novel of the same name. It is the first installment of the Jack Ryan film series.
Crimson Tide is a 1995 American submarine film directed by Tony Scott, and produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. It takes place during a period of political turmoil in the Russian Federation, in which ultranationalists threaten to launch nuclear missiles at the United States and Japan. It focuses on a clash of wills between the new executive officer of a U.S. nuclear missile submarine and its seasoned commanding officer, arising from conflicting interpretations of an order to launch their missiles. Its story parallels a real incident during the Cuban Missile Crisis, albeit aboard a Soviet rather than U.S. submarine.
Thomas Leo Clancy Jr. was an American novelist best known for his technically detailed espionage and military-science storylines set during and after the Cold War. Seventeen of his novels were bestsellers, and more than 100 million copies of his books were sold. His name was also used on movie scripts written by ghostwriters, nonfiction books on military subjects, and video games. He was a part-owner of the Baltimore Orioles and vice-chairman of their community activities and public affairs committees.
Series One started on Thursday 20 October 2005, and the series contains four episodes in total: "Startled Deer", "Special Relationship", "Prize Hamper", and "Crispy Duck".
Series Two started on Thursday 24 May 2007.
Writing for The Times , Chris Campling compared the programme favourably to the famous Naval radio sitcom The Navy Lark and called Deep Trouble "hilarious". [1] It was also selected as a 'Pick of the Day' by Phil Daoust of the Guardian on 24 May 2007. [2]
The Times is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register, adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK, in turn wholly owned by News Corp. The Times and The Sunday Times do not share editorial staff, were founded independently, and have only had common ownership since 1967.
The Navy Lark is a radio sitcom about life aboard a British Royal Navy frigate named HMS Troutbridge based in HMNB Portsmouth. In series 1 and 2, the ship and crew were stationed offshore at an unnamed location known simply as "The Island". In series 2 this island was revealed to be owned by Lt. Cdr. Stanton.
The Guardian is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as The Manchester Guardian, and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers The Observer and The Guardian Weekly, the Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of the Guardian free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for The Guardian the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders.
A TV version for BBC Two was briefly considered but did not come to fruition, with the decision that the show's style of comedy worked better on the radio.
BBC Two is the second flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tends to broadcast more "highbrow" programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio channels, it is funded by the television licence, and is therefore free of commercial advertising. It is a comparatively well-funded public-service network, regularly attaining a much higher audience share than most public-service networks worldwide.
The series was produced and directed by David Tyler at Pozzitive Television for BBC Radio 4.
Pozzitive Television is a production company formed by producers Geoff Posner and David Tyler in 1992.
BBC Radio 4 is a radio station owned and operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation, broadcasting a wide variety of spoken-word programmes including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is Gwyneth Williams, and the station is part of BBC Radio and the BBC Radio department. The station is broadcast from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasting House, London. On 21 January 2019 Williams announced she was quitting the role. There are no details of when or who will be her replacement.
