The Armstrongs
Encyclopedia
The Armstrongs is a British
television
drama
/documentary
series broadcast on the BBC
in the UK. The Armstrongs is an access-all-areas insight into the unorthodox and sometimes ruthless business antics that are par for the course at "U-Fit", Coventry
's third-biggest double glazing company. The show is narrated by actor Bill Nighy
.
This was the second TV outing for the Armstrongs. The first was in a one-off documentary in 2003 called "The Office Christmas Party", which showed the preparations for U-Fit's Christmas party.
There is some discussion as to whether it is a true fly-on-the wall documentary, a fictional comedy with an elaborately constructed presence on the internet, or a mixture of the two. Note that U-Fit the company appears in the online Yellow Pages, not known for collaborating with hoaxes. John is a keen cyclist, and lives near Maxstoke in Coventry. His company is genuine, but now spends a lot of time in his holiday home in France. John can sometimes be found racing down dual-carriageways in lycra, competing in the Coventry Road Club cycling time trials on a Thursday night.
cameras and phone taps. But motivating the team is an uphill struggle and John and Ann must resort to ever-more desperate measures to boost sales. Despite their best endeavours, their plans backfire with alarming frequency. However, woe betide anyone who gets in the way of their dream of becoming multi-millionaires.
The idea is a kind of all-too-real-life version of The Office
, set in Coventry
. Ann is the more talkative of the two, a mixture of starry-eyed optimist and petty disciplinarian. John mostly just swears a lot and criticises Ann's schemes for improving the company - such as hiring a Zimbabwean motivational guru called Basil Mienie .
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
/documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
series broadcast on the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
in the UK. The Armstrongs is an access-all-areas insight into the unorthodox and sometimes ruthless business antics that are par for the course at "U-Fit", Coventry
Coventry
Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham, with a population of 300,848, although...
's third-biggest double glazing company. The show is narrated by actor Bill Nighy
Bill Nighy
William Francis "Bill" Nighy is an English actor and comedian. He worked in theatre and television before his first cinema role in 1981, and made his name in television with The Men's Room in 1991, in which he played the womanizer Prof...
.
This was the second TV outing for the Armstrongs. The first was in a one-off documentary in 2003 called "The Office Christmas Party", which showed the preparations for U-Fit's Christmas party.
There is some discussion as to whether it is a true fly-on-the wall documentary, a fictional comedy with an elaborately constructed presence on the internet, or a mixture of the two. Note that U-Fit the company appears in the online Yellow Pages, not known for collaborating with hoaxes. John is a keen cyclist, and lives near Maxstoke in Coventry. His company is genuine, but now spends a lot of time in his holiday home in France. John can sometimes be found racing down dual-carriageways in lycra, competing in the Coventry Road Club cycling time trials on a Thursday night.
Overview
Driven by the desire for profit, management team John and Ann Armstrong are constantly spying on their unwieldy sales force with CCTVClosed-circuit television
Closed-circuit television is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors....
cameras and phone taps. But motivating the team is an uphill struggle and John and Ann must resort to ever-more desperate measures to boost sales. Despite their best endeavours, their plans backfire with alarming frequency. However, woe betide anyone who gets in the way of their dream of becoming multi-millionaires.
The idea is a kind of all-too-real-life version of The Office
The Office (UK TV series)
The Office is a British sitcom television series that was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC Two on 9 July 2001. Created, written, and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the programme is about the day-to-day lives of office employees in the Slough branch of the fictitious...
, set in Coventry
Coventry
Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham, with a population of 300,848, although...
. Ann is the more talkative of the two, a mixture of starry-eyed optimist and petty disciplinarian. John mostly just swears a lot and criticises Ann's schemes for improving the company - such as hiring a Zimbabwean motivational guru called Basil Mienie .