YMMV / The Comic Strip Presents

• Alternative Character Interpretation: The Show Within a Show film in The Strike is intended as and largely seen as a merciless satire on how Hollywood takes real stories and removes any hint of truth or honesty from them for profit margins, cynical politics and just general Artistic License-based dumbing down for general audiences. However, on the Rule of Three podcast, the hosts and guest — while acknowledging all of the above — point out that the original film that Alexei Sayle's character wrote, while true to the actual events, nevertheless sounds like it would have been insufferably boring to actually watch, and that the ridiculous changes introduced by the producers actually made it a better film.
• Awesome Music: GLC: The Carnage Continues features songs and an original score by the one and only Kate Bush, including "Ken", a hilarious parody of Isaac Hayes' Shaft theme.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Five Go Mad on Mescalin features a location called Love Island.
  • In Dirty Movie, Adrian Edmondson plays a character called Mr. Bean.
  • Detectives on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown features a parody of 90s cop shows called "The Gourmet Detective", featuring a main character who was a chef turned sleuth and a parody of Keith Floyd. A Year after Detectives was broadcast, Pie in the Sky, a show with a nearly identical premise played straight (or largely at least — the show was fairly light-hearted and comedic in nature), aired its first series.
  • Even better is that also in the year after "The Gourmet Detective" parody, a book series with the exact name and premise played straight was published, and later turned into a series in 2015. Life Imitates Art indeed.
  • Gino: Full Story and Pics opens with the titular protagonist sprinting down the road being chased by police while punk music plays on the soundtrack. This oddly predicts the opening of Trainspotting, which Keith Allen also appeared in.
  • Peter Wyngarde makes a guest appearance in The Yob. Years later, Detectives on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown featured a parody of his Jason King character.
  • Space Virgins from Planet Sex features a James Bond parody with Robbie Coltrane as an M parody two years before the series was revived with GoldenEye (Coltrane also appeared in The World Is Not Enough. The film ends with the Bond parody getting a baby, something that happens in No Time to Die.
• Ho Yay:
  • Parodied in The Bullshitters (a send up of The Professionals), when Bonehead and Foyle resolve their burning sexual tension before the final shootout by getting shirtless and snogging each other while rolling around in a pile of gravel.
  • Two handsome, athletic men running around in tight jeans, with a Girl of the Week attitude towards women as opposed to their intimate friendship forged in battle...no wonder it's a Slash Fic favorite.
• Newer Than They Think: The line "Lashings of ginger beer" doesn't appear in any of Enid Blyton's writings. It was invented for Five Go Mad in Dorset, yet it's still associated with Blyton.
• Older Than They Think:
  • Bad News on Tour is a rockumentary about a British heavy metal band going a tour that goes disastrously wrong that predates This is Spın̈al Tap by a year.
  • Adrian Edmondson wrote and starred in Eddie Monsoon - A Life? Years later, his wife Jennifer Saunders would use the name for her character in Absolutely Fabulous.
• Poor Man's Substitute:
  • Had Queen of the Wild Froniter been made earlier in the series, it would have starred Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders. Julie T. Wallace and Josie Lawrence are fine, but they just aren't the same.
  • Likewise, Doon Mackichan as the Clarice Starling expy in Gregory: Diary of a Nutcase, which is just the kind of role that Saunders would have excelled at (for proof, watch the French and Saunders parody of the film).
• Replacement Scrappy: As the series progressed and moved to The BBC, many of the original cast started to appear less frequently, as they were busy with their own projects (Rik Mayall was doing The New Statesman, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders had their own show and Alexei Sayle had various shows). As a result, a "next generation" of performers appeared - Phil Cornwall, Gary Beadle, Doon Mackichan and Sara Stockbridge. As a rule, the fewer Comic Strip regulars a film has, the less good it is.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Anthony Stewart Head appears in Slags as rival gang leader Ricki, while Emma Thompson is the young mother who gets terrorised. Head also plays a roadie in More Bad News.
  • Eddie Marsan appears briefly in The Yob and Didn't You Kill My Brother?
  • Dexter Fletcher is one of the kids in Didn't You Kill My Brother?
  • Peter Capaldi appears in Jealousy.
  • Barbie in The Crying Game is played by Andrée Bernard, who would later be best known for playing Liz Burton in Hollyoaks.
  • A café owner in A Fistful of Travellers' Cheques and a brother-in-law in Les Dogs are played by Christopher Malcolm, who would later be best known for playing Justin in Absolutely Fabulous.
• Spiritual Successor: Played with. The early "Four" installments were particularly inspired by Ripping Yarns, a British anthology comedy series where each episode is a different story lampooning tropes typically found in Victorian / Edwardian era adventure stories featuring (mostly) the same cast. However, the series gradually moved away from doing straight parodies, though movie homages tended to pop up from time to time.
• The Woobie: The bridegroom in Les Dogs. He's left wandering about aimlessly, heartbroken, shut out of his hotel room on his wedding night while the doctor is seducing his bride.

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