Live, unscripted, anarchic BBC Saturday Morning Kids’ Show (continued on Sunday mornings) which ran from 2002-2006. Hosted by Richard McCourt and Dominic Wood. Chiefly famous for running entirely on Rule of Funny for an audience of children; plenty of gunge and Toilet Humor. The “Bungalow” of the title was the set, supposedly Dick and Dom's home where a bunch of children would turn up every weekend to play silly games—see a list
at The Other Wiki.
Combined Game Show elements (with prizes for the winner at the end of the weekend) with magic tricks from Dom, some Guinness World Record attempts for feats like “most pairs of underpants put on in one minute”, showing the usual Saturday cartoons, and pre-filmed inserts of Dick and Dom doing ridiculous activities in towns around the country—most notoriously shouting “Bogies!” (US English=“Boogers”) louder and louder in a public place. Plenty of ridiculous recurring characters popped into the Bungalow as well, mostly played by the same four actors.
Won a Children's BAFTA.
As a result of its use of licensed media (mainly in the form of cartoons included in the runtime) and relatively limited home media releases, a significant portion of the series became lost. However, since the mid-2010's, an ongoing effort has been carried out by fans to locate episodes of the series and make them available to view.
A song from the final episode sums up the whole thing rather well. (“We've danced in our pants and we've kissed old fogies/We've been to museums and we've shouted bogies/ What a brilliant use of your license fee!”)
A 20-episode Clip Show, Da Diaries Of Dick And Dom, aired in 2009.
Tropes Used:
- Added Alliterative Appeal: In wordplay.
- Affectionate Parody: The finale, which led to everyone getting covered in gunge, was frequently a parody of a game show—both current ones (Who Wants To Be A Muckionaire?) and ones from many years before (Muckphrase/Catchphrase). The host of the show would typically be played by men of a thousand voices Dave Chapman or Ian Kirkby—although this one where both Dick and Dom are playing Lily Savage for Muckety Muck!/Blankety Blank! is fairly startling.
- Alliterative Name: Many of the games.
- Alliterative Title: Dick & Dom in da Bungalow
- Anti-Humor: Sometimes the unscriptedness of the show became so random unfunny things suddenly became insanely hilarious, such as when a tabletop buzzer game was brought in, and Dick and Dom found the noise it made so funny that they decided to press it "until the batteries run out", and they did.
- Ascended Extra: Melvin O'Doom was brought in as a dancer for one show and became indispensable. Also several ascended one-joke characters who became recurring, like Raymond Farmer or Harry Batt.
- Aside Comment: Dick and Dom often addressed the camera. Only sometimes were they asking the producers what the hell to do next.
- British Coppers: DI Harry Batt.
- British Stuffiness: Averted, inverted, farted on...
- Candid Camera Prank: Several of the Dick vs Dom games filmed outside the Bungalow, notably Bogies and Om Pom Stick.
- Catchphrase: Lots.
- Of course, "Bogies!"
- "Go, go, go, go, go!", used at the end of Creamy Muck Muck to tell everyone to throw their muck buckets everywhere.
- "What do bungalow points me-e-ean? Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-bungalow points mean pri-zes!"
- Harry Batt has "Nae body move!"
- Tom Dickunharry has "Allright me darlings?"
- Cloudcuckoolander: The Prize Idiot, supposedly their next door neighbour, who wandered in wearing flippers and a clown wig every so often to show off the prizes. Obsessed with cheese sandwiches.
- Comically Missing the Point: The Cat's travelogues, in which he would visit a British town and fail to comment on anything noteworthy about it, preferring to point out things like the colours of garage doors.
- Confetti Drop: Done on the rare occasion that Dom somehow broke a world record.
- Couch Gag: Every episode would open with Dick and Dom arriving in the Bungalow in a variety of silly outfits and introduction... before coming back into the elevator once more and finishing the intro.
- Covered in Gunge: Including but not limited to Produce Pelting, Food Fight, Pie in the Face. The raison d'etre of the show. Ramped up from the odd squirt with shaving foam in the early days to hundreds of buckets of custard, molasses, mushy peas and tomato ketchup, among countless other edible substances. Many and innovative ways of gunging contestants—flicking tinned tomatoes, dumping bowls of tapioca, chucking eggs, smearing glue, throwing buckets of molasses across the room, painting whitewash, spraying soup from a stuffed crocodile's head, and the simple traditional gunge tank (located in the toilet) for the final loser.
- Crossdresser: The British are convinced that men in dresses are funny. And on this evidence, we're right. All the presenters and actors at various times impersonated glamourous celebrities, played Monty Python-like mums and dinnerladies, and sometimes just plain married each other.
- Crowd Song: Justified for recurring musical moments like The Pants Dance (losing contestant has to dance around with underpants on their head)—the contestants were fans of the show so they already knew the tunes and moves.
- The song sung at the end of the final episode had everyone join in with the lyrics.
- Department of Redundancy Department: Invoked with the intro song for "The Bungalow Repetition Competition", which is played twice in a row in keeping with the game itself, though the second time it's sped up to the point where it's almost incomprehensible.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Game names like Do Not Laugh Or You Will Lose.
- Excited Kids' Show Host: Both are wacky and zany.
- Expository Theme Tune: “Wake up Dick and Dom, and get out of bed/ Get yourselves dressed, there's a crazy day ahead...”.
- Most of the minigames tended to have their own, that briefly explained the rules.
- Gasshole: Diddy Dick and Dom—tiny drama queens who live (and fart) in a cupboard in the Bungalow. Played by Dick and Dom with puppet bodies attached to their real heads. Recently given spin-offs named Diddy Movies and Diddy TV, which also occasionally feature Diddy versions of other old Bungalow characters.
- The Grim Reaper: Death (played by Dave Chapman) would turn up with a giant balloon for a losing contestant to pop and get gunge all over themselves. Which fits in with the theme of the show..
- Improv:
Word of God from the DVD commentary—they only had a running order. “And you never looked at that. If we wanted to keep something as a surprise for you, we put it on the list”. - In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It: Type 7.
- Innocent Swearing: On a few occasions one of the Bungalowheads said a swear word over something. Due to being live Saturday morning television, they couldn't bleep it out. So yes, you get to see a kid say words such as "hell" live on CBBC.
- Jingle: Infuriatingly catchy. All together—“Painty painty paint paint painty paint paint, Painty painty paint paint painty paint paint!”
- Later-Installment Weirdness: In the fifth and final season, the "no celebrities allowed" rule was broken, as the sixth Bungalowhead was now a celebrity contestant.
- Also in the final season, the Saturday shows were the ones that gave out the prizes, the now pre-recorded Sunday shows now awarded the bonus prize.
- Love-Hate Relationship: Diddy Dick and Dom. Codependent, prone to beating each other up and storming out, only to be back “Luvvie”-ing each other the next week.
- Naked People Are Funny: Well, not actually naked on kid's TV. Fair amount of underpants-and-socks work, though.
- No Fourth Wall
- No Animals Were Harmed: Just as well he wasn't a real Cat, given the way they used to slam the cat-flap in his face.
- No Indoor Voice: Dani Harmer of The Story of Tracy Beaker fame went up against Dom at Bogies... do we need to tell you who won?note
- When Dick and Dom team up, the lack of indoor voice can get dangerous, giving a perfect ten, as seen in Sarah Cox and Rupert Grint vs Dick and Dom in Bogies.
- Nose Nuggets: "BOGIES!"
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Geordie Detective D.I Harry Batt:"Me hair's as real as me Geordie accent, diven't ya knair, man."
- Or Was It a Dream?: The final episode ends with the "Big BBC Boss" waking up in bed declaring he had a terrible dream, then it's revealed a cackling Dick and Dom are in bed either side of him.
- Overly Long Name:
- "Eeny Meeny Mackeracka Raridominacka Shickapoppa Dickawhopper Rom Pom Stick", a game where they stick stickers of their faces onto people's backs.
- "The Mashed Potato Grandad Snowman Game", which involves covering a grandad in mashed potato so he resembles a snowman. It Makes Just As Much Sense In Context.
- Running Gag: Almost everything.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: On her guest appearance in an episode from the final series, Rachel Stevens walked off the set twice to avoid getting Covered in Gunge. Her lack of sense of humour about the whole thing snowballed to the point that it allegedly did some considerable damage to her solo career.
- On the show on January 18th, 2004, a Bungalowhead named Raja was given a forefit named "Ready, Steady, Muck", a parody of the BBC show Ready Steady Cook. His response? Running away and hiding in the catflap. This lead to Tom Dickunharry doing the forfeit.
- Self-Deprecation: “And so, once again, Dick and Dom strike another blow for quality children's television!”
- Shaking the Rump: The "Butt Dance". Originated from a Bungalowhead named Jack who performed the dance on his grand entrance in his Sunday show. It became a Running Gag after that, he even had a plaque in Da Bungalow after it took off.
- Slapstick
- Spinoff: One element of the show, the very short Diddy Dick and Dom sketches, were sporadically used as filler between CBBC programmes long after the show ended. Two separate series, Diddy Movies and Diddy TV, were eventually filmed.
- Recurring character Harry Batt had a pilot for a spin-off show that was then shown on the very short-lived show Gina's Laughing Gear.
- Surreal Humor: Why two Murray Walkers inside the same sweater? Why a half-dog-half-chicken character called Barky Cluckinson? Why marauding pumpkins flushing ready meals down the toilet? Rule of Funny, that's why.
- Synchro-Vox: Particularly the Huw Edwards skits.
- Toilet Humor: Plenty. Included masses of fart gags, fart sounds played in, etc, but the actual word “fart” seemed to be taboo. “Trump” or “Bottom burp” were fine, though.
- The word "fart" was only used to actually describe a fart a single time in the final episode. When it was used, Dick loudly exclaimed that they have never said that word on the show, because you shouldn't use that kind of language.
- The show often ended up in trouble with parents and even the House of Commons for its 'lavatorial' content, questioning whether it was a decent use of the public's licence fee. Dick and Dom was aware of it, and even referenced it in their finale song:
"The really loved us in the House of Commons, we had a weekly spot on Points of View." - Unlicensed Game: Phone-in guessing games were adapted loosely from Yvon of the Yukon and Taz-Mania, two series that were aired as part of the Bungalow episodes.
- The early episodes had a game based on Rentaghost.
- Unusual Euphemism: Funny or rude-sounding phrases like "flap-crackers!" and "scroggage!" were fairly liberally employed.
- Vomit Discretion Shot: Even in the game Make Dick Sick, oddly.
- Your Head Asplode: Mr. Choosy, the balloon-headed man with a question mark for a face, always wrapped up his appearances by bursting his head with a pin.
- Zonk: The first and second prizes were real, but third prize would be something like a half-used tube of verruca cream.
