Ranking Peter Kay TV Series From Worst To Best

Of all of the episodes of That Peter Kay Thing, premiere ‘In The Club’, which focused on miserly wheelchair-bound club owner Brian Potter, was probably the best of the bunch. It isn’t really surprising, therefore, that Kay and co-writers Dave Spikey and Neil Fitzmaurice, who took on a role alongside his collaborators after not being in the original episode, made it their choice to expand into a full series.

The majority of the supporting cast, including aforementioned doormen Max and Paddy, were retained, with new characters such as Fitzmaurice’s Ray Von added to create an ensemble piece focused on Brian’s attempts to keep his titular Phoenix club afloat in a rapidly declining industry.

The results were often disastrous, but always hilarious, with Potter’s rivalry with fellow club owner Den Perry, the general idiocy of his employees, the effects of his cost-cutting measures (ranging from a German slot machine that pays out in Deutschmarks through to a child’s bouncy castle repurposed from an Amsterdam sex exhibition) and Spikey’s consternation as the straight man trying to stay sane in the face of everything amongst the regular highlights.

A third series of the show has long been mooted, with Kay having regularly claimed that it has been written. His longstanding animosity with Spikey and Fitzmaurice over credits (the show was marketed as ‘Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights’) always seemed to be (and probably remains) the blocker, along with the fact that working men’s clubs are now effectively non-existent across Britain.