Doris Visits Port Guides or chat on the Facebook Groups is found by hundreds of cruisers each week, and they all ask: Is Jean Doris?

Jean was that crazy woman Doris, in the crazy show Shades of Bad. #Schitt’sCreek started the year after Shades of Bad finished having topped the New York, We Love Soaps chart. it took over as the completely silly show. If you have seen that, then this is in the same ballpark and comes with the same warnings.

DORIS, SHADES OF BAD – how it started

In short, Jean wanted to make a TV series while trapped at home, because she was nursing Stuart prior to his brain surgery. He wrote then, which maybe why it is extra twisted.

Two three minute episodes were shot in afternoon, one day each week for 30 weeks. They went out as a twice weekly coffee soap. After two were shot (about 5 minutes of screen time of a longer episode) the team was given the next script. Stuart pushed and shocked them further each week. You will see why, and it is unlikely you don’t laugh at some point, if not very quickly.

When Jean could travel she took some gigs on ships, and they decided to shoot some inserts of the show – Doris Shades had been sent somewhere; first to the Fjords, then to Barcelona. Other cruise characters starred.

The obvious question arose, why not film a Doris travel show?

Doris Visits is a spin off show from Shades of Bad.

DORIS, SHADES OF BAD – how

Jean and Stuart owned INDYUK Films. They made movies and TV. They had not long made Bula Quo in Fiji for Universal with Rock Legends Status Quo. The composer that works with Stuart is Mark Blackledge. His son Buster was 17 and Mark asked them to take Buster to Fiji as an apprentice. Buster wanted to direct and make films.

When Stuart was injured and house bound, Jean wanted to make a show. Buster became the one man film crew, the kitchen became the location. No one expected the run away success.

Stuart and Mark agreed to fund it, supply the equipment, write it, and post produce and add music. All Buster and the three women had to do was make it.

Shades of Bad was born. It was a twice-weekly online soap of three-minute episodes. It lasted for 62 episodes and topped the New York , We Love Soaps chart, saw Jean win two awards as Best Actress and it got sillier and sillier as the tiny kitchen group were pushed. Jean and Lynn regularly won Best Pair.

The dark and twisted show that was making people laugh out loud and gained a huge cult following as well as awards. It was never meant to be a serious offering. Stuart picked up the phone to see who might guest in it. TV shock Jock James Whale plays a police detective, Derek Redmond a gangster. Manuel Martinez as a local guide… etc.

Stuart’s twisted writing took everyday problems but in setting them in a kitchen and from two ordinary women it is a shock. His point as a writer was to have the audience disgusted by Doris as easily as they otherwise ignore the crimes elsewhere, and make it funny. It is shockingly laugh out loud funny.

Buster’s 3 to 6 minute shows have been edited together into half hour episodes and make a series. The short coffee break shows were never meant to go together as a long-form series. Although they would have been scripted differently, and everything from the music, to being shot by Buster doing camera, lights, and sound would have changed for a more serious project … it has a style.

Shades of Bad became a cult hit in the USA!  The premise was that one morning Doris woke to have no husband. She had discovered he had been unfaithful. Where he is, and who his dalliance was with, all come out in her need for revenge.

The travel show theme music, Happy Cruisers, comes from Shades Of Bad, as did much of the early music used on the travel show. Two episodes are live, we will load the others. It is amazing what you can make in your kitchen! The themes are not suitable for children as the plot suggests. Not everyone gets sarcasm and dark humour, children certainly would not.

Shades is way in the past and he Doris Visits travel show has taken over. The name has stuck, and we are forever explaining it. So, here it is. Jean prefers working in cruise than on film sets.

Not only did the madness of Schitt’s Creek follow Doris Visits, but Doris wanted to take over the world using nanobots… James Bond used that theme some years later too!!

FJORDS

Gangster Derek Redmond send Doris on a cheap flight to deliver a package to Oslo. Doris doesn’t do cheap flights, so gets a suit in a cruise ship, but it goes to the wrong side of Norway – a Fjords cruise.

BARCELONA

She is then sent to Barcelona. Cruise ship comedy magician Gary, or Manuel Martinz has to take her to the buyer. The interior of the jewellery shop scenes were filmed weeks later in Chorleywood with London actor Nick Simons.

We have been asked to put the others up so will. As they are age restricted you have to go you YouTube to watch, where you must verify that you are old enough. Verification of age is nearly a social media industry standard.

This is what we do now. Much easier. Much more fun. But we are retired…. officially, by any measure, with post-retirement special birthdays looming.