About
What’s this?
A surreal sketch show by Tim Scott.
What’s this?
A surreal sketch show by Tim Scott.
What’s this?
OSPREY HOUSING!
What’s this?
A surreal sketch show by Tim Scott.
Dare to Believe was a late night ITV sketch show. It aired for two series, making a total of 26 episodes, during 2002 and 2003. It was a psychedelic mix of surreal sketch comedy, music, magic and hypnotic visuals. It gathered a cult following amongst students, returning clubbers, insomniacs and practitioners of herbal medicine.
Popular sketches included the agua moose man, Twarb coffee, Recognising things and the otter survey. Its own website described the show as;
"Dtb has characters. Some easily identifiable. (A football coach whose only advice to his players is "be better".) And some from planet bonkers. (A woodwork teacher who only ever makes hods for carrying badgers.) And some from a planet way way beyond even planet bonkers. (A man dug into a hillside having bicycle parts hung on him by a small child).
And, as well as that, it has bizarre pictures of objects with weird voiceovers, it has a cartoon strip about a boxer who fights a bookshelf, it has a person in an otter costume. It has all this."
The show was created and is written by Tim Scott (And Now In Colour, The Skivers). Additional material was also written by celebrated horror and SF novelist Michael Marshall Smith (The Man Who Drew Cats, Only Forward, The Straw Men) and screenwriter Tim Firth (All Quiet On The Preston Front, Neville’s Island, Calendar Girls).
But is it any good? Well this is a fansite, so guess what, the answer is yes! If you like your comedy surreal, bizarre and just plain odd this is for you. It’s very silly and a whole lot of fun. The two series have been compared to Monty Python – and not always unfavorably. Less sycophantically, as with all sketch shows some elements work better than others - but still, every sketch has its fans.
What’s special about Dare To Believe is that it’s different. There is nothing else like dtb on our screens at the moment, and it’s that quality that wins it its fans. There’s a playful innocence about the whole show. There are no puns, no satire, and it’s a relief to find a new comedy that doesn’t think bad language or gross-out tactics is a replacement for humour. In this case the humour is found in the silly and the surreal.
Although Tim Scott plays the majority of characters himself, the cast also includes Michael Marshall Smith, Amanda Abbington (20 Things To Do Before You're 30, The Debt) and Jennie Linden (Dr. Who and the Daleks, The Word). The show also includes Chris England (An Evening with Gary Lineker, Bostock's Cup) and Paul Simpkin (Spitting Image, Bostock's Cup) who perform their own characters, and music from Rod Argent of The Zombies.
Prior to Dare to Believe Tim Scott was known as Tim de Jongh, and together with Michael Smith, Tim Firth and William Vandyck (King Stupid) wrote and starred in the radio 4 sketch show “And Now In Colour”. If you get chance to catch this show you can hear some interesting proto-d2b material.
Dare to Believe had a semi-spin-off in 2004 called Dusty and Dan. This included music and celebrity interviews by Dusty and Dan, a has-been double act played by puppets. Both shows were produced by The Children’s Company, which itself was originally set up to produce Tim Firth’s excellent kid’s show, Roger and the Rottentrolls.
The BBC had their say on Dare To Believe, and they weren't all that complimentary about it but never mind! Click here to read what they said.
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