Trivia / The Brittas Empire

• Acting for Two:
  • Chris Barrie plays both Brittas and Vlad in "At the Double".
  • Harriet Thorpe also plays both Carole and her alter-ego in "Wake Up the Lion Within".
• Completely Different Title: In Croatia, it was aired as "Brittasovo Carstvo" (aka "The Kingdom of Brittas").
• Corpsing:
  • "Mums and Dads" ends with Brittas giving a hilariously disastrous performance of "Knock Three Times" in the centre, with Tim and Gavin in attendance. During this, their actors (Russell Porter and Tim Marriott respectively) can be seen trying not to laugh at various points during the recital scene and have to look away from the camera's view.
  • When Carole is taking too long fussing over the computer to give Mrs. Philips her ticket to the pool in "http://etc", one of the extras in the scene is seen visibly trying to hide her laugh when Carole shows off Mrs. Philips' greasy hair shampoo, despite the fact the extras are supposed to look annoyed.
• Dawson Casting: "Playing With Fire" (aired in 1994) suggests that Gavin is 24 years of age. His actor (Tim Marriott) was about 35 at the time. Strangely, "Gavin Featherly R.I.P." (aired in 1997) would later Retcon this by claiming him to be 36 years old, which would be closer to Marriott's age of about 38 at the time and no longer an example of this trope in action.
• Development Gag: A very early idea for the series was to have Brittas as a chaos-causing vicar before his occupation was changed to leisure centre manager. Series 3's "Two Little Boys" would introduce proper Horatio Brittas, Brittas' twin brother, who is not only a vicar, but just as incompetent at his job as Brittas.
• Development Hell: A Revival of the show was being planned around 2015, but it didn't come to pass for whatever reason.
• Distanced from Current Events: "We All Fall Down", which ended with a line of children being electrocuted to near death, had to be delayed from it’s original premiere date of the 26th of March 1996 due to the Dunblane Massacre. “At the Double” was aired in it's place and it eventually aired on said episode's intended air date, the 9th of April.
• Friendship on the Set: The cast have gone on record as saying that they enjoyed each other's company, to the point of describing themselves as like a family, and some of them still keep in contact with some of the others to this day.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The two sketches that the show did for Children in Need in 1995 and 1996 (the first of which had Brittas interact with boxer Frank Bruno) were not included on the DVDs and are now missing.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Patrick was initially played by several uncredited actors from Series 1-3, but was played by John Carrigan beginning in Series 4.
  • Ben has it the worst - he's played by an unknown baby in "Bye Bye Baby", Phoebe Gilpin in "Back from the Dead", Jonathon Norris in Series 4 and 5, and another unknown child actor in "Snap Happy" (it's also unclear if the last child actor is responsible for Ben's occasional off-screen sounds or lines in Series 6 and 7).
  • Matthew and Mark Brittas, the twin sons of Brittas and Helen, are played by Alexander Mallen and Jack Thorpe Baker in "The Stuff of Dreams" and uncredited child actors in "The Christening".
• Post-Script Season: The show was originally planned and completed for a five-series run by writers Richard Fegen and Andrew Norriss, a lesser example of British Brevity. The BBC liked it so much however that they recommissioned it for a further two series. Fegen and Norriss declined to return, however, and the last two series were written by a team of six.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: Russell Porter (who plays Tim) is gay in real life. However, Tim Marriott (who plays Tim's boyfriend Gavin) is not.
• Real-Life Relative: A rare creator variant: Andrew Norriss' son John played Carole's son Ben during Series 4 and 5.
• Referenced by...:
  • The Beautiful People episode "How I Got My Turner" featured several of the cast briefly watching an episode and commenting on it (the episode isn't named, but the footage shown shows it to be "Curse of the Tiger Women").
  • Mongrels featured a spoof of it in "Kali and the Rickshaw Inferno", complete with a puppet version of Colin, Vince as Brittas, and a remix of the theme tune.
• Shrug of God: In regards to the unknown final fate of Brittas' stepchildren in "In the Beginning...", Andrew Norriss did not provide a concrete statement, saying that having a stepfather like Brittas would certainly make things interesting, but that they hopefully haven’t suffered much more trauma than anyone else.
• Torch the Franchise and Run: After five seasons the writers were done with the series and ended the final episode by killing the main character Gordon Brittas very definitely. Due to the series' popularity, the BBC continued it for another two seasons under different writers, with the script resorting to literal Divine Intervention to get Brittas back (which honestly wasn't that far-fetched considering the tone of the show). Then their final episode ended on a possibly even more depressing note as the entire series turned out to have been All Just a Dream by Brittas as he was napping on the train on the way to the job interview for the position where he started in the first episode.
• Uncredited Role: Despite being the most prominent of the background staff members, John Carrigan was never credited for his role as Patrick.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The role of Gordon Brittas was originally offered to Peter Davison. However, he turned it down in favor of the short-lived sitcom Fiddler's Three.
  • This sitcom was originally going to be set at a Community Centre before the creators found out that the concept had already been done in another series.
  • According to this interview, Pippa Haywood (who plays Helen Brittas in the final product) was actually called up for a different role (which remains unnamed in the interview). However, she liked Helen's role so much that she asked to read for her as well, and she ended up getting that part instead.
  • Another early idea for the series according to this documentary would have had Brittas as a vicar. As such, Horatio Brittas (Brittas' similarly bumbling vicar twin brother) may have been a reference to this idea.
• Word of Saint Paul: According to Tim Marriott and Russell Porter (who plays Gavin and Tim respectively), their characters would have gotten married by the present day (which at the time of the interview they revealed this would have been around 2017).
• Written by Cast Member: Tony Millan previously played Ken Owen in "Bye Bye Baby" before going on to write several episodes during Series 6 and 7.

---