Caledonia MacBrains
Info Box
Host
Rob MacLean
Co-hosts
Team captains: Fred MacAulay and Karen Dunbar
Broadcast
The Comedy Unit for BBC One Scotland, 17 October 2001 to 12 June 2002 (18 episodes in 2 series)
Synopsis
Comedy panel game with a truly groansome pun for a title. Two teams of three face questions about Scottish culture and recent, or not so recent, events.
The show was much derided, becoming a by-word for bad television in the Scottish press, and many people were surprised when it was recommissioned. Nobody was surprised when the second series proved to be the last.
Frankie Boyle was script editor and described the show in his autobiography thus:
- It was supposed to be like a Scottish version of Have I Got News for You, but the BBC wanted to use archive rather than current news footage. We'd kick off every week by making the panel do gags about the local news from 1973. It was truly an amazing disaster but got quite a bit of coverage, for example two pages of the Daily Record under the headline "The Worst Show Ever". It was a fun job though. Every week I'd pour all my efforts into filling the script with references to classical monsters. Minotaurs, Mermen, Griffins, on a good week it was like watching Dominik Diamond read aloud from a medieval bestiary.