David Tennant's Obscure TV Appearances: 1993's 'The Brown Man'
...a sitcom pilot starring legendary comedian Arnold Brown
Hi everyone! I’m back today with a treat - a deep dive into one of David Tennant’s rarest television appearances: the sitcom pilot The Brown Man. This one is so rare, even David’s role in it is a question mark.
So let’s dive right in!
In the early summer of 1992, a young David had just turned 21 and was about two-thirds of the way through his stint as a member of the 7:84 Theatre Company (Scotland), which had begun in October of 1991 with The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. He’d completed two more productions with the company before that summer - Jump The Life To Come in February and Scotland Matters in May - and was looking forward to what would be his last production with them, Antigone, in February 1993.
But before he would step on stage for that last time with the 7:84, he had plans of an entirely different nature. He had a television pilot to do!
Something David had done when he was nineteen was about to play a pretty significant role in his life once again. Back then, he’d arranged a meeting between himself and then-BBC producer David Blair to talk about how to approach television in all its forms - interviews, auditions, etc. - as an actor, as it wasn’t a subject his theatre-centric classes at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD, now the Royal Conservatoire) had addressed in much detail.
Their meeting had helped David stick in Blair’s mind - so much so, Blair had already cast David in a bit part in his Scottish pastoral drama Strathblair. But that meeting was about to reap benefits for David once again.
You see, Blair was busy developing two other series in that summer of 1992, one of which was farther along in the process than the other. One of those was a six-part drama series set in a mental asylum with a tentative title of Making Waves (which was originally scheduled to film in the summer of 1993 but was pushed back into the fall.) The second was The Brown Man, a thirty-minute sitcom pilot for BBC2 starring well-regarded comedian Arnold Brown.
And because of that earlier meeting, Blair would eventually cast David in both of these series.
— You can find my interview with David Blair here:
David’s fans know Making Waves well: re-titled Takin’ Over The Asylum, it was broadcast on BBC2 and went on to win numerous awards, including the 1995 BAFTA TV Award for Best Drama Serial and Best Editing, and the Scottish BAFTA for Best Serial and for Best Writer. David has said on many occasions since he felt being cast as Campbell Bain was a pivotal point in his early career.
But Takin’ Over The Asylum isn’t the series we’ll be chatting about today. Nope! We’ll be talking about that second one - The Brown Man.
The Brown Man has always fascinated me, because it’s one of only two television and film performances of David’s I’ve never had the opportunity to see (the other is a 1996 short film called Quality Control - a film you can read more about here:
As such, The Brown Man is largely an “unknown” in the logbooks of David Tennant’s career - so much so, there’s much more about this sitcom that we don’t know, than what we do. But I’ll do my best to share what little I’ve been able to uncover.
It appears The Brown Man had been in development since at least the beginning of 1992 under Colin Gilbert’s The Comedy Unit, an in-house BBC Scotland department behind such classics as Rab C. Nesbitt (which in 1996 became its own independent production company). It was described by the Glasgow Herald as follows:
…starring Arnold Brown, playing himself as a private detective. Another program trying to create its own world. Katy Murphy (Miss Toner in Tutti Frutti) reverts to secretary. Gemma Craven is a clapped-out nightclub singer. Andy Gray, Celia Imrie and American actor Lou Hirsch will have roles. It's by another Glasgow writer new to doing a series, Jonathan Bernstein.
Now Arnold Brown probably won’t be a name many of my readers will recognize, but in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Brown was one of the titans of UK comedy. Many still consider him the godfather of alternative comedy. A Scottish Jewish comedian born in Govanhill in south Glasgow, Brown’s particular brand of droll, meandering humor had won him the title of the “Comedian’s Comedian”, and he was known as “the Brown man” (which inspired the title of the sitcom). Brown was the darling of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and in 1987 he was the first standup comic to win their prestigious Perrier Award. In 2014, he received the first ever lifetime achievement honor at the Scottish Comedy Awards. You can catch one of his routines here.
Given Brown’s popularity at the time, it’s no wonder Gilbert wanted to capitalize on it. The unit commissioned Glasgow writer Jonathan Bernstein (who later did 2018’s Unsane) to draft a script, brought on David Blair to direct, and got Gemma Craven and Celia Imrie - both well-regarded actresses in the UK - to sign on to join Brown in the cast. The Brown Man was given the go-ahead, and the pilot was shot for BBC Scotland.
An 18 July 1992 article in the Edinburgh Evening News reported Brown:
…has filmed a pilot of The Brown Man, with him as a gumshoe and Katy Murphy as his sidekick, and a series may follow.
This comment helps us significantly nail down a timeframe for when the pilot was shot. Given guest star Gemma Craven had been on a different shoot until May 1992 (and David himself was due to start rehearsals for Hay Fever at the Dundee Rep in late June), it’s my best guess the pilot was filmed sometime in early June of 1992.
A 26 November 1992 feature on Arnold Brown in the Edinburgh Evening News mentions the upcoming sitcom, and Brown is quoted as saying he had high hopes the pilot episode would turn into a series. But what really makes this piece a stand-out is what was included with the feature - a photo!
Ah, now don’t go getting too excited quite yet…as sadly, it doesn’t feature David. It features Brown and Katy Murphy as his “sidekick” secretary. But I was still ridiculously happy to find it, because it provides us with what may be the only glimpse we’ll ever get of this mysterious part of David’s career:
David’s role in The Brown Man is listed on his Wikipedia page as “Ventriloquist”. This information can be verified by David’s own words about the part during his behind-the-scenes commentary of the episode ‘Fool On The Hill’ from the DVD version of Takin’ Over The Asylum; he says he played a ventriloquist with about seven lines in the whole of the episode! His name in the drama? Well - information I’ve gleaned from Christopher’s Perry’s excellently researched The British Television Pilot Episodes Research Guide 1936-2015 state David played a character called Billy The Boyd.
Now as for why the BBC waited until September 1993 to air the pilot? That’s anyone’s guess. I couldn’t find any sources to help explain the delay. It was only a thirty-minute sitcom, and certainly wouldn’t have spent a year in post-production. Perhaps it wasn’t shown until Brown’s schedule cleared a bit, in case the pilot was a success and he needed to be available to make a series? Who knows - I can really only speculate.
Leading up to the show’s premiere on BBC2 from 9-9:30 pm on 7 September 1993, newspapers across the UK published synopsis blurbs. Here are but a selection:
The blurbs above reveal only the barest bones of the plot, but we don’t really have much else to go on - so it’ll have to suffice. The Brown Man is advertised as an offbeat comedy private-eye spoof where Arnold Brown plays the titular private eye. Brown "sets out to uncover the truth behind a series of deaths on the talent night circuit.” Brown "has to sift through nasty goings-on" in the "surreal world of one-arm jugglers", a "tawdry, twilight world of second-rate showbiz, a world of tinsel and gold lame, where nothing is what it seems." We know Katy Murphy played a secretary. And, finally, “could a glamorous karaoke singer [played by Gemma Craven] be responsible?"
If it’s true the long span between the filming and the release of The Brown Man was due to Brown’s scheduling, he needn’t have worried. Public reception to The Brown Man was, well…let’s just say it wasn’t favorable and leave it at that, shall we?
Here’s what John Millar of The Daily Record had to say:
And another journalist, Allan Campbell from The Scotsman, was quick to insert this commentary about The Brown Man’s reception during his short feature on writer Jonathan Bernstein:
Not surprisingly the BBC quickly and quietly chose not to pick up the series, and the pilot episode was the only episode ever aired.
As I said at the beginning of this piece, I’ve looked and looked for years for this short 30-minute comedy to no avail. Even the venerable British Film Institute doesn’t have a copy of the recording in its archives! The BFI does have this record (#409739), but it is a placeholder and nothing more; the record states, “No film or video materials are held by the BFI National Archive, [and] no collections [are] held by the BFI. This record is for information only.”
So I have to remain hopeful someone out there recorded it…somewhere…and I just haven’t been able to find it yet. And you know, this might be closer to the truth than I think. I say that because of that curious little discrepancy between David’s Wikipedia listing of his role in The Brown Man and the one mentioned in Perry’s Pilot Episode guide, Billy the Boyd. Since the action in the comedy is played out at a talent night show, I guess it’s possible to surmise Billy the Boyd was a ventriloquist? And if so, how would someone know this…unless they’d seen the pilot, or have other sources for it of which I’m unaware? Grrr. It makes me wish all the more the information on that Wikipedia page was sourced!
There’s not much more I can add to the tale of The Brown Man. I’m in the process of trying to reach out to a couple of people involved with this show, and if I learn anything new and exciting, you’ll be the first to know!
THE BROWN MAN
CAST
The Brown Man - ARNOLD BROWN
Angel Bailey - GEMMA CRAVEN
Jim - GEORGE DRENNAN
Ne'Ville - ANDY GRAY
Marty Hyphen - LOU HIRSCH
Ann Ratner - CELIA IMRIE
Floyd the Fan - FORBES MASSON
Mimsy - MARIA MILLER
Hilary Preminger - KATY MURPHY
Lance Bowley - JAMES RYLAND
Billy the Boyd - DAVID TENNANT
Lydia - LINDY WHITEFORD
Dinky Sue - LISA WIGGINS
Fire Eater - AILEEN WILKIE
Club Band - JIM CONDIE and DAVID McNIVEN
CREW
Script - JONATHAN BERNSTEIN
Director - DAVID BLAIR
Producer - COLIN GILBERT
Production Company - BBC Scotland (later The Comedy Unit)
Music - DAVID McNIVEN