Unthinkable Serendipity

I've probably mentioned before that I have roughly the same taste in radio as my colleagues. They don't quite have my obsession preoccupation passion level of interest but we generally like the same things and they're very patient with me when I try to make them listen to far too many things.

"I like Think the Unthinkable," a colleague said the other day (only without the hyperlink).
"So do I but in some ways it feels a bit dated. Crazy overspending on ineffective consultants isn't quite such a big deal as it used to be."
"Dated? How old is it?"
"Um...." <insert sound of typing 'Think the Unthinkable' into Wikipedia> "Early two-thousands. 2001 to 2005... Hang on, four series?"

At the risk of this turning into another statistics-based repeats rant, when I did my un-statistical charts I left Think The Unthinkable out because I was pretty certain that there were only two series and that makes for a bad pie chart. After all, in the several year I've been listening to Radio 7/4 Extra, there have only ever been two series broadcast. The programme page only listed two series so therefore: two series. I didn't expect that the big flaw in my charts would be the fact that they couldn't represent a complete lack of any broadcasts.

Anyway. A couple of evenings after I'd been discussing Think The Unthinkable with my colleague, I noticed that it had appeared on 4 Extra's comedy schedule. Normally I'd think "that's nice" and not bother to check into the details. Surely it'd be another repeat of series one or two? No. Series three.

If you've not heard it before, Think The Unthinkable features a completely useless group of consultants who rampage through a series of companies wreaking a destructive trail of 'savings' and 'improvements' as they invariably leave customers spiralling into bankruptcy in their wake.

If I say that the characters are largely either too stupid or too awful to be likeable, it’ll sound like an insult but it’s really a compliment. Utterly misguided and oblivious Ryan; naïve and new-age Daisy; overbearing and intimidating Sophie; and just plain disgusting Owen. If you knew any one of these people in real life you’d change your phone number and move to house to escape them. But even though they’re terrible, and even though they’re perpetually doomed to make a bad situation worse, each episode remains funny and never crosses into the cringe-inducing failure that some sitcoms wallow in.

So if you're a fan of Think The Unthinkable, make sure you're not missing out on the first repeat of the third series since records began (or, more accurately, since the new website programme listings began). It's funny, not nearly as dated as I perhaps implied and it features Marcus Brigstocke. With Giles Wemmbley Hogg too, it’s clearly Brigstocke-season again on 4 Extra. Repeats for 2000 Years of Radio and The Museum of Everything can't be far behind. Now, if only that too had some secret extra series.