The Estate Agents

[Dan leaves]
Cliff: "We're going to drop Clark."
Adam: "Yeah, we thought we'd give you a scoop. Clark's gone. It's going to be Goodwin and Kelly," says Adam, "we're going to do some straight laced, main stream comedy, early evenings, Sundays."
Cliff: "After Songs Of Praise."

If you haven't heard the hype surrounding Channel 4's new sitcom, "The Estate Agents" then you must be a pleb or a big goon. Or both. Extended from their Comedy Lab idea, when we meet Electric Eel, their six part series is pick of the day in the majority of the week's TV listings magazines and TV Choice in particular has gone for an interesting angle, finishing their article '…with Cliff Kelly.' "They obviously instinctively know who the star is," says Cliff. "I don't know if they've got him mixed up with Henry Kelly, or Matthew Kelly," suggests Adam. They have made their first appearance on live TV promoting the show on the Big Breakfast and there are trailers showing after all of Channel 4's comedy shows.

The Estate Agents has been 'in the can' for over a year and waiting for confirmation of a broadcast date has been a trying time for us all. Since recording the show in 2000, Electric Eel have been "going mad" and working on live material as well as the scripts for a possible second series. "It's been tough," says Adam, "because no one likes us until the series is out." "And maybe even not then," adds Dan, obviously anxiously awaiting the public's reaction. Over the past year we were unreliably informed that the show would go out March 2001, August 2001 and were even given an alleged date for November 2001, and as Adam explains, none of these were to be. "This wonderful opportunity that we'd been given by Channel 4 has taken so long to materialise. It's been quite difficult but at the same time it's been quite good for us because we've had a lot of time to reflect and to focus on stuff within our own personal lives but hey let's not get into that."

Anyone who saw 1999's Comedy Lab will know to expect sex, violence, action and stringently thought-out characterisation. "We were writing the biogs for the channel 4 website recently, and found out something interesting about Mark England The last line of England's biography reads 'Mark is on anti depressants'. It is both slightly strange and a tribute to their involvement with the characters that they still seem to be learning more about their own characters as they continue to write more about them. As Dan explains, the three characters, Jerry Zachary (Dan Clark), Mark Devlin (Adam G. Goodwin) and Mark England (Cliff Kelly) are still evolving. Their origins lie in a set of characters Electric Eel had previously been working on for a show on BBC Choice a few years ago, which was set in an accountants firm. "We just wanted to play against type. Cliff was playing a Cockney wide boy, Adam was playing a really happy go lucky character, and I was playing a neurotic, insecure person."

Jerry Zachary, played by Dan Clarke, is a cocaine sniffing, unsavoury, sleazy womaniser. "He is constantly after quick immediate buzzes in life. He wants to have sex all the time, he has to have drugs. He's quite happy to meander through life on his own, as long as he's getting sex at least twice a day." Despite all of which, there is a confusingly likeable element to Jerry's character, "he's two faced and shallow, but there is something a bit cool about him. He will throw a cigarette into his mouth and catch it first time, always. I think it's probably the way I play him," suggests Dan smugly. "I get a bit jealous that Cliff gets to do something so different. And Adam gets to do all the stunts. I just get to sleep with ladies. What's fun about that?"

Mark Devlin, played by Adam G. Goodwin endures the brunt of most of the bullying within Embassy Properties and is subjected to a good battering in every episode. He is another bitter and selfish character who they hope viewers will find themselves disliking to such an extent that they cannot wait to see him being shot, beaten up or covered in his own blood. "The main thing about Devlin," explains Adam, "is that if it can go wrong for him it will go wrong, he never gets a break." The father of twin boys, Mark Jnr and Lucy (who "thinks he's a girl"), he is in the process of splitting up from his long-suffering wife Jenny. We are told he owes Tony, the owner of Embassy Properties, an awful lot of money but we are not told why. "Mark Devlin deserves no sympathy. He deserves everything he gets because he's a nasty, nasty man."

Cliff Kelly tells us about his character who completes the trio of vile estate agents. "Mark England is a beautiful freak, in respect that he is so uptight, he always wants to do the right thing, but he finds it difficult. He's easily influenced. He's a project of 50s Britain, stuck in middle England - hence the name." Mark is the only one out of the three who genuinely enjoys his job, believing his calling in life is to house the nation in the appropriate property. "He doesn't see it as a money grabbing thing," explains Dan, "he doesn't see estate agents as leeches. He thinks that if he didn't turn up for work the place would crumble, but it wouldn't at all." Mark England is their favourite character to write for because he has so many sayings, and to a certain degree he has his own language which we are promised will escalate if the show runs into a second series.

They are aware of the risks of writing a series based around three repulsive characters, even though there is so much more to each of them than is immediately apparent. Dan explains, "that's all we're worried about. People watching it and not understanding that we're laughing at them rather than with them. There's not really a redeeming feature. Even Mark England who is the nicest of the three is a proper loser." The only other recurring characters are Tony Britten, the present owner of Embassy Properties played by the fantastic Mark Arden, and Roy Dance, the previous owner demoted to manager when Tony bought him out in 1982, played by the original actor in the pilot.

Having finished recording over a year ago, the Eels have spent time re-watching the show and re-remembering the excitement of the show in preparation for the onslaught of press coverage. "The other day we watched the first episode again," says Adam, "and because it's been such a long time I was very aware of the fact that I know everything about it now and I don't find it funny anymore." This is a sentiment that has been echoed by other TV stars when talking about the editing process of making a TV show. As Dan tells us, he and Cliff also re-watched the first episode but when they watched it they were deliberately trying to remember what they liked about it and ended up enjoying it a lot. "Adam was more cynical the time he watched it, we really liked it and laughed at stuff again."

The majority of the press for the show has been better than they would have dared hope, with most of the TV critics going for the lazy journalistic comparison with combinations of other shows. It has been described as a cross between 'The Young Ones' and 'The Office', 'The League of Gentlemen' meets 'The Office' and bizarrely 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrells' and 'Brittas Empire'. The last of which, suggests Cliff, "must have been based purely on my character's hair do." The press are also warning that the show may not suit everyone's taste, which goes without saying, but Electric Eel weren't necessarily writing a show to be liked by everyone. "We've kind of written ourselves out of a career," says Cliff, "but we've written a bloody good series." "That's the difference between us and ITV and 11 million viewers," adds Dan jokingly. "We'd forgotten how on the edge it was," he continues, "we had started to think it was bland because you get used to what you write, you're not so sensitive to stuff. When we first wrote some of the scenes in the series, we were like 'oh, we can't get away with that, can we?' and sniggering."

Channel 4 had originally been talking about scheduling "The Estate Agents" for Friday nights, which to all involved was a massive boost in confidence, so when the news finally came through that it was eventually to be shown on a Thursday and then repeated on the Friday, it stirred up mixed thoughts amongst the Electric Eel camp. "Now that it's at 11 o'clock at night on a Thursday," says Dan, "it's not going to be so under a magnifying glass. If it had been Friday then everyone would have had a massive opinion about whether it was good or not and it's going to be something that hopefully people discover, and they're not being told that they should like it." The expectations of Channel 4 would also have been higher and there would have been the danger that if they didn't reach a certain level of viewers they wouldn't get a second chance. "Whereas now we can get away with 30, 40 people, and that would be okay," jokes Dan. And if the second series is commissioned and the scheduling is changed to a more competitive slot, then they will know that it was self-achieved rather than purely through PR. Dan continues, saying, "we want to do the second series because we do have a certain pride in bettering ourselves. AND I THINK THAT THE SCRIPTS FOR THE SERIES TWO ARE EVEN BETTER. SO WE'D LIKE TO BE GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY BY CHANNEL 4 TO DO THAT. If you could print that in quite big capitals, that would be great. And just email it to everyone at 4."

Ahead of a possible second series and on the back of the inevitable success of the first series, Electric Eel should be performing a live show at the Edinburgh Festival this year and are looking forward to it as Adam explains, "Edinburgh's a whole new kettle of fish. We've done it for so many years, and every year it's different. Every year is like an empty plate where the food has been guzzled and then vomited back up and eaten again and re-fed to children."

They will also have to get used to a certain level of fame and recognition. "I'd much prefer that we are, within the industry, recognised for what we've done and that we have a healthy career for the rest of our lives," says Adam, "and that I can earn lots and lots and lots of money so that I can provide for myself and my family." Former child actor, and resident of the Pink Windmill, Cliff on the other hand always wanted to be famous when he was younger, but now he is older and there is a chance the dream will be realised, he is beginning to question how scary it could be. "There's two sides to it. If you're having a bad day and you're in a bad mood and someone approaches you with a comment that you're already bored of hearing I can imagine that you'd react quite badly but other days I think it might be quite nice if someone's enjoyed the series, it might be quite a positive experience." Like Adam, Dan prefers the idea of recognition from those who have enjoyed the show. "That means that they're going to kind of get what we're about. . Whereas if you've got East Enders or Coronation Street fame, that means statistically one in three people in this country knows who you are. But they know the character that you play and they think that you're the character that you play." They are all aware of the adverse affects of fame and how crass it can be but they have reliably informed us that there is a chance they won't remember us if they do reach the dizzy heights of stardom. "It is quite scary," Dan confesses, "this is the biggest thing we've done yet. This is our biggest career moment and if people don't like it... it's quite a weird time." Whatever the reaction of the general public may be, Electric Eel continue to be original, funny and genuine and "The Estate Agents" promises to be one of the most exciting new comedy shows in a long time.

"The Estate Agents", Thursdays, Channel 4, 11:05pm (repeated Fridays 11:55pm) www.channel4.com/estateagents

Read last February's interview with Electric Eel *HERE*