Bottom (TV Series) Smells (1991) User Reviews

Great TV

[slightlymad22 · 8/10 · 25 December 2014]

Having loved 'The Young Ones' I could not wait to watch this new comedy from my two favourite characters from that show.

Plot In A Paragraph: After a bad night down the pub, after failing to pick up women. Richie is depressed because nobody wants to have sex with him. Richie then finds the answer to his problem in the form of a 'Sex Spray' that makes any man attractive to the opposite sex. Having bought a can of the spray each, Richie and Eddie head down to the pub to try the stuff and see if it works.

I loved it back in 1991 and now rewarding it with my 9 year old son, we were both laughing out loud at jokes I had forgotten and he was seeing for the first time.

RIP Rick

... men of science

[snoozejonc · 8/10 · 28 September 2020]

Richie buys a so called pheromone spray he thinks will make him attractive to women.

As in every episode we have lots of funny scenes of character performance and violent slapstick from the central two characters, in this case as they visit a sex shop and then make hilarious attempts to pull women down the Lamb and Flag.

Rik Mayall in particular is so funny in his desperate attempts to have sex he doesn't even have to say anything. His facial expressions and body language are genius. Ade Edmondson is also funny as the perpetually drunk and comically blunt Edward Hitler, who blunders into conversations and relentlessly gets Richie into trouble (not that Richie needs help doing that).

The visual comedy is fairly good with a handful of solid sight gags, most of them violent, but the best one is non-violent and happens in the sex shops.

Clive Mantle has a funny cameo as an outraged hard-case married to one of the ladies the boys try to pick up at the bar.

Look out for the moment when Richie almost calls Dick the barman a c*** for calling last orders at closing time.

"My, what a smashing Blouse you're wearing."

[The-Last-Prydonian · 9/10 · 7 February 2023]

The first episode of the low-brow, offbeat, adult, cult sitcom Bottom, which would go on to run for three series, between 1991-1995, introduces us to flatmates, Richard "Richie " Richard, and Edward "Eddie", Elizabeth Hitler. Two unemployed, misogynistic losers who live in their squalid flat in the London borough of Hammersmith. Having come back from a night of failing to be able to pull, they see an advertisement in a newspaper for a sex spray called pheromone which allegedly attracts women to the opposite sex. Picking up a couple of bottles from a sex shop they set out to their local pub, the Lamb and Flag to try and score a couple of "birds" with crazy, hilarious results.

As, an introduction to two of the foulest and asinine, comedic anti-heroes in British Sitcom history. Rik Mayall and Adrian "Ade" Edmondson do a frequently hilarious job of cementing the distinctive character traits of both its protagonists. It's a basic, simple premise of two losers going out for a night out, which serves as a funny, inspired means to show irretrievably how inept, charmless, and out of their depth both of the two sleazy reprobates are when it comes to attempting to chat up women. Richie is thoroughly inadequate and displays how totally clueless he is, while Eddie just lacks any kind of finesse, and tactlessly blunders his way through any attempt to woo the two utterly disinterested women, who they eventually set their sights on.

Whether it's Richie attempting to pull a woman at the bar to the understandable anger of her husband, along with trying to mime wanting to purchase "Johnnies" from a condom machine and then attempting to do so. Both Rik and Ade are at their comical best here, really throwing themselves into their roles. They really seem to be enjoying themselves, displaying as well their aptitude for some amusing slapstick moments of physical humour. Featuring as well, guest appearances by Harriet Thorpe best known for her long-serving role in, The Britas Empire, and Clive Mantle from the long-running Hospital Drama series, Casualty. Kevin McNally, playing the sex-shop owner, also provides further solid support. Smells would set the standard for the first series, and its following and its proceeding two to come.

Utterly, utterly, utterly, utterly stupid.

[BA_Harrison · 7 February 2020]

A decade after appearing in anarchic comedy series The Young Ones, Rik Mayall and Ade Edmonson starred in Bottom, playing flatmates Richard "Richie" Richard and Edward Elizabeth "Eddie" Hitler, a couple of perverted losers who struggle to make cash or get laid. What Bottom adequately illustrates is that, even though the performers have aged physically, mentally they've stayed exactly the same, their show just as moronic, zany, puerile, and madcap as the one that made their names.

This first episode see the crude duo using a pheromone sex spray to try and score with women down the local boozer. Violent knockabout slapstick and gags about rubber johnnies, sex shops and foxy stoats are the order of the day, all of which raise a few giggles, but three series of such silliness? We shall have to see how thin it all wears and how quickly.