What's the big idea?
Rik Mayall, Nigel Planer and Ade Edmondson all became household names as a result of The Young Ones, which poked its way into the public eye in 1982. After the series ended, Mayall was keen to do another sitcom, but only had the vaguest of concepts. Namely, him and Ade sharing a flat.

Ben Elton took this very basic idea and turned it into Filthy Rich & Catflap, a fierce anti-celebrity satire. While Rik had intended to pen the script himself, Ben Elton became the main writer, coming up with almost everything himself - a pretty amazing feat given that he was in hospital with a hernia for most of that period!

The Young Ones, but more evil
The Young Ones had proved a landmark TV show - as well as introducing a new generation of alternative comedians to Britain, it also made it extremely cool to do things in extremely bad taste. So Elton and Mayall were faced with a dilemma: should the new show be more understated, or even more warped?

Naturally they took the latter route. The new show was to be meaner and more satirical. While The Young Ones had an endearingly child-like quality to it, Filthy Rich was to be "grown-up".

"It's the most nihilistic piece of telly we've ever done," Rik Mayall later explained. "It's completely anti-television and anti-fame." And anti-milkmen too, given how many are horribly killed during the series...

Awful anti-heroes
So what's the show actually about? Well, it follows the catastrophic adventures of three amoral men - two of whom crave fame and glory, while the other just craves more alcohol.

Mayall is Richie Rich, an actor who is always unemployed but nevertheless believes himself to be incredibly famous. This delusion has made him paranoid, and he lives in fear of gold-diggers and assassins. As a result, he has hired a bodyguard named Edward Didgeridoo Catflap (Edmondson). The trouble with Catflap is that he is a maniac with a fondness for blackmail, booze and bouts of senseless violence.

Sadly for Richie, his showbiz agent Ralph Filthy can offer no way out. Played by Planer, Filthy is a sleazy good-for-nothing with absolutely no pull in the industry. Like Richie, he also feels wronged by life: "Honestly, just because I run a string of discount brothels, everyone seems to think I'm a dirty old man!"

Stars against stars
Filthy Rich & Catflap may have been an anti-celebrity satire, but plenty of stars were happy to appear in it. The Nolans, Babs Windsor, Jools Holland, Fry and Laurie, and even daytime presenter Anne Diamond can be seen in the series - and if you look closely you'll even see a young, unknown David Baddiel.

The series even skewers behind-the-scenes media players. Chris Barrie appears in one episode as the pompous, weirdly demanding director of a Blankety Blank spoof called "Ooer, Sounds a Bit Rude" - but the character is actually a swipe at a notoriously picky director of the 80s satire show Spitting Image. Trivia fiends, take note!

A forgotten classic?
While The Young Ones is much-loved today for its anarchic energy, memorable characters and the way it captures the mood of its time, Filthy Rich & Catflap has never found the same success. It wasn't a critical or ratings success when first broadcast, and has since been overshadowed by Rik and Ade's ultra-successful Bottom.

Yet, Rik Mayall himself has said he believes Filthy Rich to be a superior work to The Young Ones - with deeper and more challenging satirical value. It's certainly a darker and more vicious series than its predecesser, which could explain why audiences never really warmed to it. Yet it could be time for a re-evaluation. After all, it was one of the first British comedy shows to explicitly target celebrities and the hollow pursuit of fame for fame's sake - and this was years before reality TV and gossip magazines took hold of popular culture. So, in this respect at least, Filthy Rich & Catflap was way ahead of its time. So is it a classic after all? You'll have to watch and make your own mind up!