Lise Mayer helped give The Young Ones its sharp dialogue and appetite for excess. We value the precision beneath the shouting, though the writing sometimes keeps pushing a joke after it has done its job.
Fi1m perspective
In The Young Ones (1982), Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson deliver outrageous dialogue with little inclination to hold back. We laughed at the excess because the lines give those performances something to work with beyond sheer volume. Mayer, a co-creator and writer, deserves her share of the credit for making student chaos this funny. There are limits: the weaker passages keep pushing after the comic point is clear. Even at 29 minutes, an episode can leave us wishing someone had allowed the first good joke to stand.
Mayer’s contribution becomes clearer when we look at how the scripts were put together. She and Mayall worked on scripts together, while Ben Elton wrote his own versions; the scripts were then combined. She co-wrote all twelve episodes across the programme’s 1982–1984 run. The programme’s mixture of sitcom, stand-up and music helps explain its unruliness, without excusing every passage that runs too long.
Her contribution to The Fast Show (1994) covers two episodes and a rather different way of getting a laugh. The sketches are quick, the characters sharply played, and the cast usually makes familiar routines worth another visit. Repetition can leave recognition doing the work of a joke, but there is more feeling here than the catchphrases suggest. We recommend it warmly, while being careful not to mistake a contributor’s credit for authorship of the whole series.
Later work includes writing on the animated film Flushed Away (2006), and script editing on You Me Bum Bum Train in 2024–2025. Those credits show her working beyond television comedy, but The Young Ones remains the clearest reason for our enthusiasm: its good lines can withstand actors determined to overstate them. Start there, though we would leave a pause between episodes.
Biography
Lise Mayer is an American screenwriter. She was the creator and co-writer, with Rik Mayall and Ben Elton, of the BBC comedy series The Young Ones (1982).
Mayer was born in Chicago, Illinois, to David and Anne Mayer. Her father was a professor at Manchester University, where she met Mayall while at school in Manchester. She has written for programmes including Casualty (1986), The Fast Show (1994) and London Underground, and co-wrote the films Suite 16 (1994) and Flushed Away (2006). She has also written several books and worked as a script editor.
