Advanced search
- TITLES
- NAMES
- COLLABORATIONS
Search filters
Enter full date
to
or just enter yyyy, or yyyy-mm below
to
to
to
Exclude
Only includes titles with the selected topics
to
In minutes
to
1-52 of 52
- Tim eagerly joins a meditation course to fight stress, but ends up in deadly panic in the aftermath of Gordon's initially misguided right of passage policy and Colin's killer disease samples for preventive self-infection. While Gordon infuriates a legitimate Face in the Crowd prize-claimant, the course instructor turns out to have wed Helen years before Gordon.
- Gordon realizes the center is running below a quarter of its capacity, but keeps offering ludicrously complicated formulas and incentive schemes, which the staff are determined not to win--poor Gavin's good behavior may land him in a restaurant with Gordon. Meanwhile, St. Mary's parish choirmaster Larry Whittaker is determined to get rid of the man whose membership wrecked the award-winning ensemble, but it goes wrong for both of them and for innocent bystanders.
- Gordon programs a performance by the Ruthenian State Circus- actually three bumblers, lead by Vlad, who looks just like Brittas and flirts with all ladies, including his staff. The Chattanooga 'church' wants to make Gordon a polygamous elder or even a bishop. Exhausted from their nightly catering business, Gavin and Tim are sleepy on the job. Colin is insulted when Brittas refuses to include his dubious herbal potion in the center's recent merchandising spree. Helen's depression because of her apparent failing sex-appeal makes her an easy target for Mrs. Bidmead, who suggests plastic surgery to everyone.
- The Leisure Centre staff are happy and business booms when it is thought that Mr. Brittas has been killed while on a course in Bulgaria. However, Brittas returns from the dead to cause havoc, and Carole is determined to save her baby Ben from his zombie.
- On a rare day when Gordon Brittas is out, everybody is surprised to see his office taken by 'manager' Colin Weatherby, almost unrecognizably well-dressed and odor-free. The reason sits there too: his daughter Stephanie from a brief affair, visiting for the first time ever, all the way from Tasmania, expecting the perfect father as he wrote her over the years to have various talents and occupations, such as an author pen-name and a TV show. Brittas was just returning a pen he had taken with him, but can't resist helping Tim with a boiler problem--which happens to be receptionist Carole's missing secret kitten Biggles. Meanwhile, the staff has seen a photograph of Helen that someone sent to Plaything Magazine; when Gavin tries to burn it in the boiler, Gordon finds it--and sees Colin's manager nameplate on his desk.
- Gordon takes charge at reception, but once he sends Carole away, who is desperately worried about her baby and hoping for a reconciliation with her husband Derrick--everything goes wrong. Schoolboy Peter Philips inquires whether his tie was found, but Gordon's 'methodical' approach causes a huge, noisy queue to build up behind the boy. The desperate boy pretends to have found it, only to be reported to the police as a budding thief. Ken Owen comes to give a lecture on stress management, but with Gordon as the slide-show operator, Ken fights the urge to go for his throat. A mix-up with another baby causes maternal panic and paternal desertion.
- Crusader TV reporter Roger Ferguson's budget is exhausted by a Nigerian trip, so he chooses the leisure center as next target for his 'documentary'. Gordon is confident his experience obtained from a PR course will result in favourable publicity, and even hires a gorgeous model as stand-in for Colin, but the real one's tropical rodents spread a bubonic fever. Gordon's over-confident 'damage control' makes it all much worse, and 'preventively' attracts the press.
- Before dragging the staff to a stark sea resort for the annual 'team building' event, Gordon makes Gavin confess to a record company of infringing their copyright. After receiving a letter that the company is suing for £10,000, he takes Colin's experimental spud-powered motorboat to sea and goes missing for days. Gordon assumes he's dead and organizes a cheap 'funeral' without telling the family--all overseas--there is no body. French pirates picked Gavin up and put him up for sale as a slave. Tim blames himself for writing the letter as a prank but is furious to hear that Gavin never told his family about them in 10 years, then gets a call from Gavin but nobody believes the call is from him.
- Since the last disaster actually got Gordon fired, he took a new job: petrol-station attendant. Laura isn't surprised to witness the endless lines of unhappy clients that his obsession for rules has created. An hour later, Helen tells Laura that Gordon has already been sacked. Meanwhile, at the Centre, only Colin misses Brittas' endless staff meetings and other nonsense. The new manager, Alan Digby, visits daily with unwanted, detailed 'suggestions,' but this time Gordon delivers a weather clock, personally installs it, tinkers with the timetable, and manages to exasperates a gas delivery truck driver enough to be declared persona non grata and cause a seriously dangerous incident in the center during Alan's short absence.
- Well-meaning perfectionist and incurable bumbling busybody Gordon Brittas moves into Whitbury as manager of the brand new municipal leisure center. After annoying his new neighbors almost immediately, he enters the center, not without infuriating the builders so they stop finishing work on it. Inside his totally scientific, alas reality-unrelated roster is just the first on an endless list of ill-considered decisions with even more disastrous consequences then a pessimist could expect, all the series long.
- After touring European leisure centers for the EU, Mr. Brittas is rather poetic, having fallen in love, like his wife, with Ingrid--a dolphin--and he believes in the species' therapeutic powers. Only Linda firmly opposes as 'animal abuse' Gordon's 'healing day' the next Tuesday. Tim raises the canteen to culinary heights--alas wasted on the clients, as only Carole and her closet kids enjoy the pricey menus. Rosemary Rawlinson, who has a speech/hearing impediment, is staying two weeks as a learning experience, warmly welcomed by ever-disgusting Colin. Julie messes up Gordon's order for live dolphin Wally and Tim's for shark fillet; meanwhile, Linda has mobilized a small army of animal rights activists.
- Gordon is most eager to depart to press his candidacy for a European Committee on the Leisure Industry at a dinner, but Helen, who tells Laura he always makes waiters so furious they throw food at them, has psychosomatically-blocked muscles and various staff members are programmed to make wacky responses to certain signals by a hypnotist. Gordon asks him to cure Helen, but when he also goes into a trance, Laura convinces the therapist to temporarily remove his need to change the world.
- Mr. Brittas takes charge of preparations for the official opening of Whitbury Leisure Center with a royal visit: the Duchess of Kent. Alas, the builders hate Gordon so much that they don't bother to tell him that the brand-new pool is leaking. The heating is operated by Boilerman Barnes (retired from the Navy), who takes Brittas' instructions to heat the pool 'at warp speed' literally. The electrician who should have taken care of a malfunctioning automatic door gets sent away and a well-meaning Boy Scout is commandeered in his place. The Duchess is walking straight into a war zone.
- Helen has (conveniently?) booked a week in Cornwall a week before Gordon's leave, so he's even more focused on the job, notably Energy Conservation Week, producing a mountain of (5-page) forms to be filled in at every use of electric equipment. Colin builds a complete methane digestion system for human bio-waste. Gavin's fiancée Jenny turns up after five years abroad, with amnesia. His gay colleague, housemate, and partner Tim goes through hell while Mr. Brittas champions the welcome committee. When Gavin says she was in psychiatric therapy for years after her parents' traumatic accident which turned her into a pyromaniac, Laura realizes the importance of Linda's discovery that Jenny's suitcases contain fuel and lighters. Then Colin reports she's in the basement, admiring his methane experiment; she may not be angered but Gordon is there too.
- Gordon orders all the staff to do a critical report on a colleague's performance. Tim is to do a report for him, but is now found to have unofficially changed his name to Whistler (being fatherless) Goebbels, so Gordon considers Tim as non-existent. Linda meanwhile enjoys armed police protection from P.C. Greg Edwards as she is a witness against a mobster. Helen's latest obsession is bidding absurd prices for junk at auctions which she expects staff to accept 'gratefully'. The results surprise everybody.
- Gordon closes the center for three days to put the staff through exasperating emergency simulations: the first fire drill has a 82% casualty rate, the next scenarios will be worse! Meanwhile he talks Carol out of betting £100 on the horse Tim's track tip suggested, so she puts her bag with the cash in his office. Unfortunately, Helen hides the smoldering cigarette Gavin -uneasy with her physical intimacy- gave her in the bag too. She's fuming when Gordon must go back on his promise to spend his lunch hour with her. While Gordon leads Councilor Dapping to where he wants an unnecessary larger fire-escape, the money in the bag catches fire, with terrible consequences.
- Brittas has the whole staff raise £2500 for a new trampoline via various sponsored activities, such as hunky Tim allowing people to throw wet sponges at him. Of course, things go wrong: Colin's juggling lands a ball in a high-tension wire. Meanwhile, Helen runs around scared to death after relapsing her worst pregnancy habit: shoplifting. Gordon's own sponsored silence-marathon is challenged to the limit when a certain Michael T. Farrell III from Chicago, Illinois, USA insists on talking to assistant-manager Laura on her birthday, even it it means paying the whole target sum in cash just to get in...but why?
- Brittas sees the annual official dance as a rare occasion for his staff to mix with society, but is gravely disappointed when many seem unable or unwilling to get a suitable partner. Colin asks his milk-deliverywoman; Carole places an ad and gets an answer from her first teenage boyfriend, who is now wealthy but gets his hand stuck in the suggestion box and gets into worse trouble; Laura's Texan ex-partner Michael T. Farrell III turns up, disinherited and broke. Helen has rushed back home, but in what state? The weather isn't festive either.
- Having a staff picture taken by a professional photographer while English Heritage inspector Hampries checks the building sounds easy enough. But Mr. Britas manages to start a chain of catastrophes, helped by Helen who takes her therapist's advice to get over her anxiety by taking a parachute course with the neighboring RAF. A pool event turns dirty, in a big way, due to contaminated sandwiches - a problem left for Gavin to solve.
- Gordon closes the leisure center for a whole day to make the staff fight the 'crime wave' of petty thefts. Treating everyone as suspects stirs commotion, and Danny and Mandy, feeling targeted, expose themselves as ex-cons. Gordon sets a trap, which only makes it worse. Helen needs a prescription for more depression pills, but Dr. Grey insists he knows more about the cause of her problems, so he brings over Gordon, and a short visit is enough for stronger pills.
- Gordon takes the staff for a military-style team-building exercise into Wales. While dealing with the rigors of the wild, they are relentlessly pursued by would-be assassins. Gordon's well-intentioned motivational skills make things worse.
- Whitbury New Town Leisure Centre has just been rebuilt, and is hosting an episode of the national TV religious musical program "Songs of Praise". However, Gordon feels allowing use of the sanitary facilities by the mainly elderly public constitutes a safety risk as long as the staff pigeon holes are not draught-proof, so now for once people are flocking in but the staff are ordered to keep them out. Councillor Jack Drugett feels Brittas must go, but this time he plans to offer him an irresistible challenge: European Commissioner for Leisure. Matters become further complicated when an escaped emu is discovered to be loose in the building.
- Gavin is in charge of the centre for the day, or so he thinks!
- Proud new father Gordon Brittas makes the whole staff practice in detail the perfect christening service for his twin sons, but his vicar brother Horatio, who is to preside, tells him he fell in love, and before he can elaborate, Helen--who was too busy choosing a hat to notice earlier--bursts in announcing that she has forgotten the boys somewhere, so everyone is sent out searching. Horatio's ladyfriend, Philippa Belmont, infuriates both Helen and Gordon during her very first conversations with them. The babies are found and the christening gets underway, but while he's looking for Philippa's lost ring, Gordon must advise Horatio whether to propose marriage, and Carole confesses to what she did to the cake.
- Although he feels it undermines the team spirit, Gordon must award the council's employee of the month prize, a weekend in Paris, which spurs the staff into remarkable initiative. Alas it goes very wrong for Linda, whose gym equipment boost causes constructional havoc, and Colin, whose magic act for the birthday party packet -Gavin's idea, but others claim credit- involving various animals proves dangerous for himself, animals and party guests.