Teenage Kicks (TV series)

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Teenage Kicks is a British sitcom created by Adrian Edmondson and Nigel Smith. It stars Edmondson, Ed Coleman, Laura Aikman, Jonathon Chan-Pensley and Mark Arden. The show features the opening theme “Teenage Kicks” by The Undertones, with incidental music by Simon Brint. It ran as a single series of eight 30-minute episodes on ITV from 28 March to 16 May 2008 and was filmed at Teddington Studios.

The series began as a BBC Radio 2 comedy in 2007, which was then turned into a TV show for ITV by Phil McIntyre Productions. A pilot for the TV version was filmed in 2007 with Ben Elton as Bryan, but he was replaced by Mark Arden for the transmitted episodes.

Plot-wise, Vernon Heath, a 49-year-old former front man of a punk band called The Plague, is divorcing his wife and moves into a student flat in Kilburn, London, with his children Max and Milly and their flatmate David. Vernon hopes to relive his old life, but Max, Milly and David are less than impressed. Their old bandmate Bryan, now a deputy head teacher, seems to have “sold out” and is happily married.

Reception was mixed. The Guardian gave a harsh early preview, and the show did not reach ITV’s hoped-for audience, averaging about 3.4 million viewers. Because of this, no new series was commissioned, and only the first two episodes appeared in ITV1’s top 30 weekly BARB ratings.