Alas Smith and Jones was a British comedy sketch television series featuring Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones. It was broadcast on the BBC from 1982 to 1998. From 1989 to 1995, it was called Smith and Jones.
The series followed in the footsteps of Not the Nine O'Clock News in its use of taboo-breaking material and sketches in questionable taste (as well as bad language), and also featured head-to-head 'duologues' between Smith and Jones. The series shared several script writers with Not the Nine O'Clock News including Clive Anderson, Colin Bostock-Smith and used Chris Langham as a cast regular. Other writers included Andy Hamilton.
The show's title was a pun on that of the American television series Alias Smith and Jones. The head-to-head sketches were very much in the Pete and Dud mould - Smith was the idiot who knew everything, Jones the idiot who knew nothing.
The series was one of the first to be commissioned by the BBC from an independent company, Talkback Productions of which Smith and Jones were also directors. The format of the Head to Head with similar characters was used by Smith and Jones in a series of commercials.
The show also had a brief run in the United States on A&E and CBS.
In 2006 Smith and Jones returned with The Smith and Jones Sketchbook, recorded in front of a live audience acting as a look back at their earlier shows.
Mel Smith and Griff Rhys-Jones present a series of short (often tasteless, always scathing) sketches about modern life and the stupidity and gullibility of those who believe in it. Written by Murray Chapman
