As it comes from a show that ran from 1972 to 1984, it's hard to consider my learning about the existence of Fulchester in the TV-UK as a new discovery. But last I looked at the Toobworld atlas, Fulchester wasn't on it. Now it is.
Most of this information comes from Wikipedia....
“Crown Court”
1972-1984
ITV
'Crown Court' is a television courtroom drama produced by Granada Television for the ITV network which ran from 1972, when the Crown Court system replaced Assize courts and Quarter sessions in the legal system of England and Wales, to 1984. It was transmitted in the early afternoon.
A court case in the crown court of the fictional town of Fulchester (a name later adopted by Viz) would typically be played out over three afternoons in 25-minute episodes. The most frequent format was for the prosecution case to be presented in the first two episodes and the defence in the third, although there were some later, brief variations.
Viz is a popular British comic magazine founded in 1979 by Chris Donald. It parodies British comics of the post-war period, notably The Beano and The Dandy, but with vulgar language, toilet humour, black comedy, surreal humour and generally sexual or violent storylines.
Fulchester is the town in North East England where most of the Viz characters live, including Roger Mellie, the Fat Slags and Spoilt Bastard. It even has its own football team, whose most famous player is Billy the Fish. It also has its own TV Channel, FTV, which Roger works for.
So there we have Fulchester, fully embedded in the atlas of Earth Prime-Time. But it's also in whatever metafictional universe the magazine Viz would be. It's not BookWorld (not that it's my world to make that decision; it's Jasper fforde's.) But it does have a literary bent. I'm sure it falls into some pocket dimension populated by the characters in magazine stories.
The Fulchester of Viz has no impact on the Fulchester of the televised sceptred isle.
As to where the TV Fulchester would be in Great Britain, I'm guessing it wasn't far from the general London area, unlike the one in Viz which, as mentioned above, was in North East England.
So if you write television fanfic for any show and you need to choose a location set in the United Kingdom, may I suggest Fulchester?
BCnU!
ITV
A court case in the crown court of the fictional town of Fulchester (a name later adopted by Viz) would typically be played out over three afternoons in 25-minute episodes. The most frequent format was for the prosecution case to be presented in the first two episodes and the defence in the third, although there were some later, brief variations.
Viz is a popular British comic magazine founded in 1979 by Chris Donald. It parodies British comics of the post-war period, notably The Beano and The Dandy, but with vulgar language, toilet humour, black comedy, surreal humour and generally sexual or violent storylines.
So there we have Fulchester, fully embedded in the atlas of Earth Prime-Time. But it's also in whatever metafictional universe the magazine Viz would be. It's not BookWorld (not that it's my world to make that decision; it's Jasper fforde's.) But it does have a literary bent. I'm sure it falls into some pocket dimension populated by the characters in magazine stories.
The Fulchester of Viz has no impact on the Fulchester of the televised sceptred isle.
As to where the TV Fulchester would be in Great Britain, I'm guessing it wasn't far from the general London area, unlike the one in Viz which, as mentioned above, was in North East England.
So if you write television fanfic for any show and you need to choose a location set in the United Kingdom, may I suggest Fulchester?
No comments:
Post a Comment