Nasty (The Young Ones)

"Nasty"
The Young Ones episode
Episode no.	Series 2 Episode 3
Directed by	Geoff Posner
Written by	Ben Elton, Rik Mayall and Lise Mayer
Original air date	29 May 1984
Guest stars
The Damned
Episode chronology
← Previous "Cash" Next → "Time"

"Nasty" was the ninth episode of British sitcom The Young Ones. It was written by Ben Elton, Rik Mayall and Lise Mayer, and directed by Geoff Posner. It was first aired on BBC2 on 29 May 1984.

Characters

As with all episodes of The Young Ones, the main four characters were student flatmates Mike (Christopher Ryan); Vyvyan (Adrian Edmondson); Rick (Rik Mayall) and Neil (Nigel Planer). Alexei Sayle starred as a South African vampire and driving instructor. Monty Python alumnus Terry Jones makes a cameo as a drunken vicar and comedy duo Hale & Pace appear as a pair of gravediggers that the lads tell their story to.

Plot

The show begins with a late-night burial at a local cemetery. The show then takes a flashback to events leading up to the burial. It's bath night, and while Neil jumps into the muddy bathwater used in the three others' previous baths (inadvertently finding his long-lost bicycle in the process), Rick locks himself in his room for a sneaky read of Cosmopolitan. Here, he nearly gets sawn in half by Vyvyan's cleverly placed circular saw. Mike and Vyvyan spend the time trying to set up the new video they have secured, in order to watch a video nasty. A scene-stealing postman then arrives to deliver a human-shaped package from the Transvaal. This turns out to be a vampire, who disguises himself as a driving instructor from Johannesburg. He gets caught out by one of Vyvyan's Highway Code questions - what to do when crossing a humpback bridge. When the four realise that vampires only attack virgins, it leads to them all unconvincingly denying their sexual purity. However, they are saved by the clock, as the sunlight streaming through the window hits the vampire, who despairs at having his wristwatch still set to South African time - and they manage to wrap him up in their handy red dual-purpose sofa-coffin. This results in the funeral. Back at the graveyard, the vampire escapes from a now white sofa-coffin and turns out to be Harry the Bastard, from whom they rented the video, and he quickly announces that their deadline for returning it had just elapsed and that they owe him ₤500 in late fees.

The episode features punk pioneers The Damned, performing "Nasty", a song written especially for the episode.

The opening scene of a man playing chess with Death is a reference to Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film, The Seventh Seal.