BACKGROUND: 'Fun at the Funeral Parlour'
is, as you would imagine from the title, set in and around a funeral parlour. It
features the misadventures of a Welsh family-owned firm of funeral directors
- Thomas, Thomas, Thomas & Thomas. Each of the four Thomases have unique
idiosyncracies: the patriach Ivor has a morbid fear of corpses;
the eldest son Percy was recently released from jail for crimes against
corpses; Gwynne, is the idiot of the family, and Arwell, is obsessed with an aging
rock star and his Fiat Panda. The series was first broadcast on BBC Choice between
January 2001 and 12 March 2002, and comprised 13 episodes over two seasons. The
episode: 'The Jaws of Doom' was the second episode of the first series,
and was first broadcast on 8 January 2001. It
begins with a marvellous parady of the priest's death scene in 'The Omen',
with Matt Lucas as the priest (played by Patrick Troughton in the original film).
However, instead of being impaled by a church spire, he is attacked and killed by
a wolf. The panicked villagers meet in the town hall, and the mayor agrees
to pay $3,000 to whomever kills the wolf. Enter professional wolf hunter Quimby
(played with manic delight by Tom Baker,
in a role that is very much like his Captain Redbeard Rum character in Blackadder
who offers to kill the wolf for $10,000. Quimby sets a trap using Gwynne as bait,
in a parody of the shark-hunting scene in Jaws, but he ends up being killed
by the wolf himself. Meanwhile, Percy discovers a rival firm of undertakers
is using the wolf to increase its business.
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