Off the Fat of the Land

Off the Fat of the Land is an unproduced situation-comedy project developed by Gerry Anderson with Ronnie Cass, whose credits included the Cliff Richard films The Young Ones and Summer Holiday. Their 1980 collaboration imagined a contemporary English country community, with money, social ambition and personal rivalry taking the place of spaceships and secret agents.

The surviving treatment is a glimpse of Gerry working in a genre far removed from his best-known productions. It did not become a television series, so there are no completed episodes or original screen cast to discover.

Peter Morton owns the deteriorating Merridale Manor but lacks the money to maintain it. Entrepreneur Andrew Cunningham wants to buy the property. Peter’s response is to turn the estate into a health farm, creating a setting for the clash between inherited status, commercial ambition and the demands of eccentric visitors.

The treatment also introduces Peter’s sister Jennifer and other local characters. Its open-ended situations were intended to sustain a sitcom, rather than resolve as one self-contained story. Jamie’s tour of 25 archive discoveries places the project within a much wider collection of ideas that never reached the screen.

After Gerry’s death, a short treatment was found among his papers. With Jamie Anderson’s permission, Richard James adapted the premise into a full-length stage comedy, The Fat of the Land. He described that work in 2016.

The play changes the central rivalry into a conflict between brothers, Peter and Andrew Morton, and develops Jennifer into a successful businesswoman. James also gives the story the ending a stage comedy needs, while preserving elements of the original idea and humour.

Read Richard James’ account of adapting the treatment. The stage play is a later adaptation, separate from the unmade television concept.

This is a useful companion to The Protectors when exploring Gerry’s work beyond science fiction. It also connects with Five Star Five, another dormant project that Richard James helped bring to a new audience in a different form.

The appeal of this archive entry lies in the surviving idea and what it became. The treatment, its intended television format and the later published play are different stages in that history.

Unproduced television sitcom concept. Gerry Anderson and Ronnie Cass collaborated on the treatment in 1980. Later stage adaptation: The Fat of the Land by Richard James, based on their original idea.