Ned Sherrin, at 74; creator of British mock news show

NEW YORK - Ned Sherrin, a producer who defied staid British standards with barbed, up-to-the-minute mockery of the powerful, pompous, and preposterous in his groundbreaking '60s TV show "That Was The Week That Was," died in London on Monday. He was 76.

Because of his ubiquity as a director, author, dramatist, and radio personality - or "shower-off" in his jaunty self-description - Mr. Sherrin's death may be hard for some to accept, The Daily Telegraph of London suggested in its obituary on Wednesday.

"Every time I think Ned Sherrin is dead," the paper quoted an unnamed reviewer as saying, "he crops up on television with some program in appallingly bad taste which proves only too conclusively that he is still alive."

But Mr. Sherrin is indeed dead, as confirmed by his personal manager, the Associated Press reported. Thus he will be unable to do for himself what he said was unique among his many occupations: reviewing memorial services for The Oldie magazine, which bills itself as an antidote to youth culture.

Mr. Sherrin produced 10 films; wrote novels, musicals, and plays; was host of a popular radio show; and produced other television series besides "That Was the Week That Was," or "TW3," the live political review. (A later one was a news-based quiz show called "We Interrupt This Week.") He also wrote two autobiographies, a novel, a collection of theatrical anecdotes, and a dictionary of humorous quotations.

But with "TW3," which ran for just over a year beginning in November 1962, Mr. Sherrin altered the television landscape by inaugurating a new, more youthful, more irreverent strain of satire whose prickly progeny include "Saturday Night Live" and "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart."

"Aware, pointed, irreverent, fundamentally serious, intelligently witty, outspoken in the proper sense of the word" is how Mr. Sherrin described it in a British Broadcasting Corp. memo proposing the program.

The Profumo call-girl scandal was perfect grist for Mr. Sherrin's mill, as politics, religion, and class became objects of comedy. The show pilloried members of Parliament. Its "consumer guide to religion" ruffled predictable feathers.

David Frost, the show's host, told viewers that the chancellor of the exchequer had ended a brief interview with a group of unemployed people with the words: "Well, I have work to do, even if you haven't."

When Mr. Sherrin met Princess Margaret at a party, she suggested he do a sketch about "the absurdly reverential way the press reports us," The Telegraph reported. The next week the show did a skit about the queen's barge sinking in the Thames.

Biting friendly hands was de rigueur. When The Times of London printed a spirited defense of the show on Saturday morning, The Times was mercilessly satirized that same evening.

The New York Times in 1963 suggested that the show "puts the sort of irreverent questions that you yourselves want to put." As its popularity climbed, Mr. Sherrin said, it went "from a conversation to conspiracy."

Viewership soared from 3 million to more than 12 million, comparable to that of a top soccer game, and pubs emptied at 10 p.m. so people could get home to their television sets. The studio audience had the best of both worlds: They saw the show and were provided free liquor.

Oddly, the "TW3" episode that seems to cling tightest to British memory was not funny. When President Kennedy was assassinated, Mr. Sherrin scrapped his plans in favor of a shortened tribute. With tears in her eyes, Millicent Martin sang "In the Summer of His Years."

The show was canceled in December 1963 because the governing Tories said it would interfere with the next year's general election. Frost called the cancellation "a great compliment" but wondered whether election year was not "when it is needed most." Harold Wilson, the Labor Party leader, protested the cancellation mightily.

On Dec. 28, Frost signed off, saying, "That was 'That Was the Week That Was' that was." In 1964 and 1965, an American version of the show attracted an enthusiastic following, drawing as it did on the subversive talents of people like Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Buck Henry, and Frost.

Edward George Sherrin was born on Feb. 18, 1931, into a Somerset farming family and made his first theater out of a cereal box. After army service he found his way to Oxford, where he studied law, which he never used except to pass his bar exam. At Oxford he wrote a revue starring Maggie Smith.

He worked briefly for a private network, then joined the BBC and quickly advanced to producer. Hugh Green, the BBC's director-general, wanted a show to "prick the pomposity of public figures." Mr. Sherrin developed a format.

"What I have tried to do is to convert into TV terms the sort of sophisticated, intelligent conversation on current events you might find in a bar on a Saturday night," he told The New York Times in 1963. "That's all."

No information was available on survivors.