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401,033 | 7,743,887 | 516,955 | 8 | Tara King - Traitor ? | Like Philip Levene before him , Jeremy Burnham was an actor ( he appeared in the ' Avengers ' episode ' The Town Of No Return ' ) who switched to writing . He penned five of the 32 Thorson adventures , all of them good , of which this is one . Tara has been assigned to try and break the security of the War Room - an underground centre where a computer known as ' The Field Marshal ' is in control of Britain's nuclear defences . Gilpin ( Alan MacNaughtan ) , the man in charge of the War Room , informs General Hesketh ( Ralph Michael ) that the Field Marshal thwarted a rocket attack in 1961 . Incredulous , the General says : " But there was no rocket attack in 1961 ! " . " Precisely ! " , responds Gilpin . Following an unsuccessful break-in ( why she is blacked-up ? It is daytime ! ) , she prepares to organise another . But unbeknowest to her - foreign agents Gregory Zaroff ( Alan Browning ) and Dangerfield ( Alan Wheatley ) plan to discredit her by making it appear as though she has gone over to the other side . When pictures of Tara chatting to Zaroff in a London street are sent to Mother , he immediately reduces her Departmental rating . She is kept prisoner in her flat , but escapes and sets out to clear her name . Her only ally is Steed . . . The late Alan Browning is best known for his role as ' Alan Howard ' in ' Coronation Street ' . The character married the Street's resident sex bomb Elsie Tanner ( Pat Phoenix ) as did the actor who played him . Like Ian Hendry , he was a good actor who would have gone on to bigger things had it not been for a drink problem . He died in 1979 . Alan Wheatley - the elegantly dressed ' Dangerfield ' - was the ' Sheriff Of Nottingham ' in ' The Adventures Of Robin Hood ' which starred Richard Greene . Why his base of operations is a boxing ring in an opulent drawing room is not made clear ( though its no more bizarre than some of Mother's hide-outs ) . The concept of a computer controlling a country's defence system would be explored in the movie ' Colossus : The Forbin Project ' , released in 1970 . The villains ' hope that by discrediting Tara they can force the War Room to dismantle the Field Marshal for a limited time , leaving the country wide open to rocket attack . The scene where Tara drives up to a red phone box in the middle of the English countryside inspired the original opening of the 1998 film . Steed's trick with the house of cards is clever . How did he do it ? |
401,359 | 7,743,887 | 62,578 | 8 | A Big Hand For The Little People ! | Scientists may not approve ( I don't think it was aimed at them anyway ! ) but in the U . K . in 1969 ' Land Of The Giants ' was a smash hit . At school on Monday mornings , the number one talking point in the playground was the latest episode of ' Land ' . I would try to steer the conversation towards the ongoing saga of ' Dr . Who ' in ' The War Games ' , but it was no use . ' Land ' had Britain's children ensnared in its grip . It was kind of like ' Planet Of The Apes ' in that it too featured a group of humans who , after passing through a ' space warp ' , find themselves marooned on a strange world where evolution has taken a different turn . As you'd expect from an Irwin Allen series , characterisation was barely in evidence , but the show boasted some amazing S . F . X . sequences , intriguing story lines such as ' Ghost Town ' , and the excellent Kevin Hagen as the sinister Inspector Kobick of the S . I . D . As was the case with a lot of U . S . sci-fi shows , the novelty soon wore off - ' Land ' was cancelled after two seasons . |
400,636 | 7,743,887 | 516,960 | 8 | Coughs & Sneezes Spread ( Deadly ) Diseases ! | This episode opens with a classic ' Avengers ' teaser - Harley Street doctor Camrose ( Hamilton Dyce ) opens his mail , and is perplexed to find an empty envelope addressed to him . Only it is not as empty as it seems - inside is a microscopic germ , a distillation of the common cold . In mere seconds , Camrose has literally sneezed himself to death . He is the latest in a line of doctors to die the same way . Fearing a major flu epidemic could be about to engulf the country , Mother dispatches Steed and Tara to investigate . The trail leads first to the Anastasia Nursing Academy , and then to the home of Colonel Timothy ( Retired ) , played by Roland Culver , who runs an anti-allergy clinic . Glover ( Fulton Mackay ) is in league with the A . N . A . ' s Matron ( Sylvia Kay ) to develop the ultimate weapon - a bug that kills in seconds by inducing so much sneezing in the victim that all air to the lungs is cut off . They will sell it to the highest bidder once it is perfected . First , they must kill the only doctors who might have found an antidote . . . Jeremy Burnham wrote this originally for the Emma Peel series , under the title ' Atishoo ! Atishoo ! We All Fall Down ! ' . It is based on a suitably outrageous premise , peopled by fine actors of the calibre of Valentine Dyall , Henry McGee , Dudley Sutton , Charles Lloyd Pack ( father of Roger ) , and has some good moments , but strangely never becomes the classic it promises to be . I think Paul Dickson , the director , took it much too seriously . He also worked on ' The Champions ' and ' Department S ' - with far greater success . This was Fulton Mackay's second appearance in ' The Avengers ' - he was in ' Return Of The Cybernauts ' and reappeared later in the Thorson series in the final episode ' Bizarre ' . Sylvia Kay , who plays ' Matron , was ' Mrs . Warrender ' in John Sullivan's ' Just Good Friends ' . Mother's office is strange even by his standards - it looks like an unfinished film set , with a pool and stepladders galore . During the briefing , Rhonda gives both Steed and Mother ice cream cornets ! Colonel Timothy's clinic is a wonderful piece of design - so that we never forget its main purpose , the main corridor wall has a gigantic nose carved from stone ! A different director , such as Robert Fuest or Charles Crichton , would I think have made a better episode . At least it got Burnham's stint as ' Avengers ' writer off to an above average start . |
401,253 | 7,743,887 | 726,244 | 8 | Hitler's Back - Cosmic ! | Created by Roger Price , ' The Tomorrow People ' was one of several I . T . V . sci-fi shows that attempted to rival ' Dr . Who ' . For the uninitiated , the T . P . are a group of youngsters - the next stage in human evolution - possessed of telepathic powers , like Tim Kring's ' Heroes ' only minus the tedium . The fondly remembered children's show ran from 1973-79 . This was the first of a two-part story . A new craze among young people for Nazi uniforms sweeps the world . When Mike ( Mike Holloway ) turns up at the T . P . ' s H . Q . in a Nazi jacket and peaked cap , he is roundly admonished by John , the T . P . ' s leader , who regards his wearing them as an insult to the war dead . Humbled , Mike removes them , but after being roughed up in a café by thugs calling themselves ' stormtroopers ' , gets the overwhelming urge to put them back on . Meanwhile , a teenage boy in an S . S . uniform is run over and killed in Germany . Records show he is in fact 44 years old , yet does not look a day over fourteen . John , the leader of the T . P . , views archive footage of Hitler in 1944 with the scientists working to perfect cryogenic suspension . The same boy can be seen in the film . So can it be true ? Did the Nazis freeze some of their most brilliant men - including Der Fuhrer himself - place their bodies in an underground bunker , to be watched over by a squad of Hitler youth , kept eternally young through drugs , waiting to be revived to instigate The Fourth Reich ? Hitler was a busy fellow in the mid-to-late ' 70's ; a year before , he had been in the care of monks on a remote Scottish island in ' The New Avengers ' caper ' The Eagle's Nest ' . But whereas he spent the duration of that episode off-screen in a casket , here he is up and about before the end of the first episode , embodied by the late Michael Sheard . The actor played the role several times , most notably in ' Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade ' in 1989 . It should be pointed out , however , that here Hitler is actually a shape-shifting creature from outer space ( strange that Lord Olivier failed to mention this on ' The World At War ' ! ) . In a particularly gruesome ( for the time ) scene , we see Der Fuhrer regain his true state ; black goo oozes out of his eyes , his skin goes a slime green , and ( yuck ! ) his right eyeball leaves its socket and trickles down his face ! I did not see this when it first went out , but bet there were one or two sleepless nights experienced by the original audience . Spot The Future Star : yes , that is Nicholas Lyndhurst as ' Karl ' , one of Der Fuhrer's guardians . This was just before ' Going Straight ' in which he played Ronnie Barker's drippy son ' Raymond ' . He gives a good account of himself here ; his experience with Nazis would serve him in good stead twenty years later when he did ' Goodnight Sweetheart ' . As a matter of fact , there was a craze for Nazi badges around this time , but I never saw anyone going so far as to wear a uniform . It would not be tolerated nowadays , of course - unless you are a member of The Royal Family . |
401,060 | 7,743,887 | 959,711 | 8 | In Praise Of Older Doctors | Paul Collier lands a job as a ' television doctor ' - dispensing medical advice to breakfast television viewers . His popularity makes him an instant celebrity , and soon he is knee deep in fan mail from adoring women . His colleagues , particularly Snell , are disgusted , not to say incredibly jealous . A bitter argument breaks out concerning Collier's penchant for seducing women half his age . Then he announces his engagement to a young American researcher , and the you-know-what really hits the fan . . . Bill Oddie's script owes a debt to two classic ' Doctor ' episodes - ' Doctor On The Box ' from ' In The House ' , and ' Pull The Other One ' from ' At Large ' . It tackles the subject of the male menopause rather well . Waring and Stuart-Clark's girl-chasing days are long behind them , but Collier appears to be having the time of his life . As well as the fame acquired from his television exposure , he seems to have weathered the passing of time better than the others . No wonder they hate him . Its only when Rebecca accidentally records an open admission by Collier's fiancée that she only wants to marry him to stay in the U . K . does he realise he has been had . Collier's television persona was obviously based on Dr . Hilary Jones , another good-looking G . P . also to be found doling out practical medical advice from the breakfast television sofa at that time . A key problem with the show is highlighted here - the laugh track . The classic show had one , but the humour was on a slightly different level to ' At The Top ' . Here many good lines play to total silence from the studio audience , which is a shame . Funniest moment - Collier is walking down a corridor when a man on a stretcher cries out . Thinking the man to be in pain , Paul goes to see what the trouble is . It turns out the patient wants an autograph ! |
401,581 | 7,743,887 | 516,843 | 8 | The Ultimate In Camouflage ! | As ' The Avengers ' series developed , a little repertory company was formed of performers who would appear in the show time and time again , mostly playing villains . The roster included Peter Jeffrey , Julian Glover , Peter Wyngarde , Patrick Cargill , Garfield Morgan , William Franklyn , Patrick Allen and Peter Bowles . The future ' Bounder ' was in three episodes : ' Second Sight ' , ' Escape In Time ' , and , of course , this . British Intelligence have picked up three Russian agents in Britain , here on a mission to assassinate top British operatives , and imprisoned them in a base concealed in a monastery . When two manage to escape from under the watchful eyes of the ' monks ' , and eliminate their designated targets , Steed is naturally worried . The third name on the hit list is his own . . . Bowles plays ' Ezdorf ' , the last of the Russians to pull off a daring escape act worthy of Houdini , with a little help from a bottle of Lizard vodka . When bathed in , it gives one the ability of a chameleon , hence the Russians are able to become invisible , fooling their captors into thinking they have escaped . As soon as the cell doors are opened , they slip away . The theme of invisible enemy agents had previously been explored in ' The See Through Man ' , also written by Philip Levene . The main difference is that here the invisibility is real ! In the 1998 movie , Patrick Macnee provided an amusing cameo as ' Colonel I . Jones ' , a camouflage expert so good at his job he literally could not be seen ! |
401,641 | 7,743,887 | 78,579 | 8 | James Bond In Outer Space | I . T . V . started with at a disadvantage with ' Buck Rogers ' in the autumn of 1980 - they didn't have the rights to the pilot episode ' Awakening ' , so they began with ' Planet Of The Slave Girls ' and hoped for the best . They needn't have worried . ' Buck ' was a smash-hit in Britain , its ratings outstripping those of ' Dr . Who ' over on B . B . C . - 1 . It was colourful escapist fun , perfect Saturday night entertainment . Such was its popularity that when I . T . V . ran out of Year 1 episodes , they went straight into Year 2 , causing confusion amongst fans here . Everything good about Year 1 was dumped , including - unforgivably - Pamela Hensley as ' Princess Ardala ' . Buck , Wilma and Twiki were relocated on a spaceship called ' Searcher ' , Dr . Huer was never seen nor mentioned again , a boring alien called ' Hawk ' was introduced as a regular , the plots scraped the bottom of the sci-fi barrel , and Buck lost his famous sense of humour . Worst of all , Wilma looked less sexy ! As Twiki would say : " What a bummer ! " . |
401,583 | 7,743,887 | 294,079 | 8 | Ladies and Gentle-men . . . | When ' Hancock's Half-Hour ' ended in 1960 , Ray Galton and Alan Simpson expressed interest in writing for a comedian they had long admired - Frankie Howerd . But Tom Sloan , the B . B . C . ' s head of comedy , told them to forget the idea as he was no longer popular . To prove his point , he produced graphs showing the low ratings for Howerd's last series . The writers went on to create ' Comedy Playhouse ' , one of which - ' The Offer ' - was the launching pad for ' Steptoe & Son ' . Howerd then surprised everyone in the entertainment industry by staging a remarkable come back ; firstly , he was booked by Peter Cook to appear at ' The Establishment ' night club , and secondly , landed a spot on the B . B . C . ' s top-rated Saturday night satire show ' That Was The Week That Was ' in which he commented on the recent Budget . It may seem strange that a comic of Howerd's calibre should have jumped on the satire band wagon , but to his credit , did not fall off again . In 1964 , Galton and Simpson got to write a series for him - produced by Duncan Wood - and unsurprisingly it bore a remarkable similarity to ' Hancock's Half-Hour ' . Howerd played ' Francis Howerd ' , an exaggerated version of himself , a humble comedian with aspirations to becoming an international star . Each edition began with Frankie addressing the audience directly , before relating a personal experience which would be told in flashback . In one episode , he went to the House of Commons to research political humour , and got mistaken for an M . P . In another , he tried to get ' with it ' by hanging out with the ' mods ' of Carnaby Street . In another , he appeared in a television play and caused a strike by admitting to not being a member of Equity . Howerd's talking to the audience enabled him to get in a few crafty insults at the expense of those he encountered . He constantly referred to Sir Hugh Carleton-Greene as ' Thingy ' . When he met some long-haired young men - members of a pop group - he instantly mistook them for girls . " We're not birds , we're blokes . " , said one of their number : " We're ' The Question Marks ' " . Glancing at the camera , Frankie quipped : " I don't doubt it ! " . Encountering Arthur Mullard , he said : " Robert Morley , I presume ? " . The guest stars included Warren Mitchell ( as Frankie's agent ) , June Whitfield , Patrick Cargill , Peter Butterworth , Beryl Reid , Arthur Mullard , Hugh Paddick , and John Le Mesurier . Many of whom had been on the Hancock show . Michael Robbins - ' Arthur ' from ' On The Buses ' - appeared fleetingly one week . Two seasons were made , comprising twelve episodes . Having viewed a few recently , I would say that it is like ' Dawsons Weekly ' and ' Casanova 73 ' in that it is enjoyable but not among Galton and Simpsons ' best . After it ended , Frankie appeared on various variety shows and a movie - ' Carry On Doctor ' - before landing the series for which he is best remembered - ' Up Pompeii ' . |
401,018 | 7,743,887 | 213,372 | 8 | The Show That Made Con-Men Tremble ! | ' Braden's Week ' was a popular Saturday night consumer affairs show . After being seen in a margarine commercial for commercial television , Bernard Braden was fired by the B . B . C . , the show handed over to co-presenter Esther Rantzen , and renamed ' That's Life ! ' . Bob Wellings ( of ' Nationwide ' fame ) and George Layton ( best known as ' Dr . Paul Collier ' from I . T . V . ' s ' Doctor In Charge ' ) sat at her side in its first year . The change was more than just cosmetic ; ' Braden's Week ' was a serious consumer affairs programme with comedic undertones , whereas ' That's Life ' veered more towards the humorous . Each Sunday , that brass band theme tune heralded a hodge-podge of a show in which newspaper misprints would be read aloud by a dinner-jacketed Cyril Fletcher , companies apologised for their mistakes in the form of over-twee songs , Jake Thackray , Victoria Wood or Richard Stilgoe sang humorous ditties , and there'd be a vox pop sequence in which Esther terrorised shoppers ( one in particular , giggly old age pensioner Annie Mizzen , became a popular character in her own right . One of the first reality T . V . stars ? ) Then there was the ' Jobsworth ' Award - a gold , peaked cap awarded to sticklers of bureaucratic rules , no matter how foolish . As well as the talking dogs , tap-dancing ducks and beer-loving bats . One well-remembered item concerned a strange animal called a ' Lirpa Loof ' . It was a hoax ; all one needed to do was reverse the letters of its name to find that out . Every comedian has a catchphrase ; Esther's was her penis-shaped vegetables . All she had to do was hold one up to the camera and the audience had hysterics . But the show had a serious side too . In the mid-80's , it launched a campaign to find an organ donor for a dying little boy named Ben Hardwick . One was found , and Ben duly got his new liver . Sadly , it came too late . Even so , thanks to ' That's Life ! ' , his story touched the nation . Then there was the expose of paedophilia at a boys ' private school , which made chilling viewing . During its twenty years on air , presenters came and went . For my money the best were Kieran Prendiville ( later a script writer ) and Glyn Worsnip ( who died tragically young from a brain disease ) . Paul Heiney and Chris Serle also proved popular , going on to front their own show ' In At The Deep End ' . In 1979 , Esther launched a short-lived spin-off aimed at children called ' Junior That's Life ! ' . It was a disaster . Viewers thought the whole show was supposed to be funny , and laughed at the serious bits . ' That's Life ' was not without its critics . Some felt it inappropriate to feature real-life tragedies side by side with schoolboy jokes about bums and wee wee . The ' Not The Nine O'Clock News ' gang did their usual hostile send-up , with Pamela Stephenson as Esther ( " Sorry said The Gas Board . This has absolutely nothing to do with us ! " ) . ' Spitting Image ' went further , accusing Esther of tastelessly exploiting Ben Hardwick's illness in the name of ratings . The sketch was itself attacked in the popular press . The best spoof was done by L . W . T . ' s ' End Of Part One ' ; entitled ' That's Bernard Braden's Show Really ! ' it featured Sue Holderness as Rantzen and Denise Coffey as Annie Mizzen ! In 1994 , viewers decided they had had enough and so ' That's Life ! ' was put out to pasture . The entire cast reunited for one final show entitled ' That's Life All Over ! " . Gone it may be , but its spirit lives on in the form of the B . B . C . ' s ' Watchdog ' and I . T . V . ' s ' House Of Horrors ' . |
400,693 | 7,743,887 | 65,012 | 8 | Where There's A Will | By the late ' 60's / early ' 70's , the hey-day of British comedy films was well and truly over . Though they continued to be made , their chief inspiration was television . Alongside the numerous ' On The Buses ' and ' Steptoe & Son ' spin-offs were remakes of past glories . ' Some Will , Some Won't ' was based on the classic Mario Zampi film ' Laughter In Paradise ' , which starred Alistair Sim . When arch-joker Henry Russell dies , he bequeathes to his four relatives a share in his fortune . But there's a catch ; in order to qualify each must carry out a specific task to the letter . Haughty spinster Agnes ( Thora Hird ) must spend a month working in a hotel . Philandering Simon ( Leslie Phillips ) has to marry the first woman he speaks to on leaving the solicitor's office . Timid bank clerk Herbert ( Ronnie Corbett ) needs to rob the bank where he works . Bestselling pulp crime novelist Dennison ( Michael Hordern ) has to spend a month in prison . Needless to say , the would-be beneficiaries are not very good in carrying out their respective tasks , and there's a twist ending you can see coming a mile off . Of the four sections which comprise the main body of the plot , the best is the Hordern one , while the worst is Phillips ' tedious romancing of gold digger Barbara Murray . Lew Schwarz's script sticks closely to the Jack Davies and Michael Pertwee original , even incorporating the original film's most famous scene - Denniston trying to get arrested for shoplifting in a department store . Most of the cast brought along their established comic personas ; Leslie Phillips plays the roguish cad , Thora Hird the sharp-tongued battle axe , James Robertson Justice the bombastic tyrant and so on . Also along for the ride were Arthur Lowe , Stephen Lewis from ' On The Buses ' , Wilfrid ' Steptoe ' Brambell , and Noel Howlett of ' Please Sir ! ' fame . The director of was Duncan Wood , producer of the television shows ' Hancock's Half-Hour ' and ' Steptoe & Son ' , as well as a charming Harry H . Corbett vehicle entitled ' The Bargee ' ( 1964 ) . If you have never seen ' Laughter In Paradise ' , you should enjoy this film . Despite the familiarity of the material , its worth watching mainly for the wonderful cast . And its not every day you get to see Ronnie Corbett as ' John Steed ' from ' The Avengers ' ! |
400,763 | 7,743,887 | 264,962 | 8 | Let's Get The Network Together ! | Bruce Forsyth's decision to quit ' The Generation Game ' at the height of its popularity probably earned him more criticism than anything he had ever done before , including leaving his wife for a younger woman , hostess Anthea Redfern . He rightly felt the show to be getting stale , and wanted to move on before it deteriorated further . He was also tired of game-shows , and wanted to return to his first love - performing . London Weekend Television signed him to front ' Bruce Forsyth's Big Night ' . Launched to great fanfare , it was a two-hour circus , with Bruce as ringmaster . It had singing , dancing , comedy , games , something for everyone . If you didn't laugh at Charlie Drake's ' The Worker ' all you had to do was wait for Steve Jones to bring on his ' Pyramid Game ' . If you weren't keen on that , you didn't need to panic because along in a minute would be a spot of disco dancing , or maybe a bit of fun with Russ Abbot ( so popular did Russ prove that a few years later he was given his own show - ' Russ Abbot's Madhouse ' ) . The B . B . C . were naturally worried at the thought of losing one of its biggest stars , so by way of competition assembled a strong line-up that included ' Dr . Who ' , ' All Creatures Great & Small ' and ' The Little & Large Show ' ( alright , I know Syd and Eddie were awful , but they were huge in 1978 ) . ' The Generation Game ' was revamped as ' Larry Grayson's Generation Game ' in which the camp comedian co-hosted with Scottish singer / actress Isla St . Clair . If Bruce thought his audience would follow him onto the commercial network , he was sadly mistaken . To the amazement of everyone , Larry made a success of ' The Generation Game ' , while ' Big Night ' - after a strong start - began to sink in the ratings . Critics , predictably , tore it to shreds . Many branded Bruce a ' traitor ' for leaving the B . B . C . , some accused his wife Anthea of playing up backstage . Bruce was so hurt he publicly returned two awards given him by ' The Sun ' , and , in an unusual move for the time , angrily defended the show on air . Yes , it had teething troubles , but was really not that bad . If nothing else , it deserves credit for introducing a new generation to the brilliant comedy writing of Frank Muir and Denis Norden ( Jimmy Edwards , Patricia Brake , and Ian Lavender starred in remakes of ' The Glums ' sketches from ' Take It From Here ' ) . L . W . T . spared no expense ; Bette Midler closed the first show , Dudley Moore , Elton John and Sammy Davis Jr appeared on later editions . ' Big Night ' was moved to an earlier time slot , then reduced in length to ninety minutes . When all that failed to work , it was dropped completely , a great shame in my view as it was a sparkling gem and miles better than the dross ( yes , I'm talking about you , Ant & Dec ! ) we get on Saturday nights now . Bruce must have thought his career was over . But within two years he bounced back as the host of ' Play Your Cards Right ' . |
401,545 | 7,743,887 | 297,503 | 8 | Brilliant Billy ! | Billy Dainty ( yes , that was his real name ) won this show on the strength of a show stopping appearance at the previous year's Royal Variety Performance , whereby he reduced The Queen Mother to tears of laughter . Famed for his ' eccentric dancing ' , he was a marvellous physical comedian , vocalist , not to mention outstanding pantomime Dame . ' Esq . ' combined sketches with music , and occupied the ' Opportunity Knocks ' slot on Monday evenings . It gave him full rein to display his numerous talents , particularly a sketch entitled ' The Eurovision Dance Contest ' . I can recall falling about at an item in which he played a man in a library who annoys the staff with his squeaky shoes . He was ably supported by Graham Crowden ( often cast as authority figures ) , Derek Deadman , and of course the lovely and talented Sheila White , at that time appearing in the hit ' Confessions ' movies ( in which she was one of the few females not to take off her clothes ) . ' Esq . ' afforded Sheila the opportunity to do some amazing impersonations of Suzi Quatro , Cher and Nina ( of ' Nina & Frederick ' fame ) . In addition , she and Billy played a warring middle-aged couple who conducted a fierce row in the manner of a televised boxing match . Despite having many excellent qualities , the show was surprisingly not recommissioned , although it was repeated in full a year or so later . Billy went on to become a regular in the B . B . C . children's show ' Emu's Broadcasting Company ' ( E . B . C . ) . He died in 1986 , and an edited episode of ' Esq . ' was shown on I . T . V . by way of a tribute . Sadly only two editions are known to have survived . |
401,256 | 7,743,887 | 956,509 | 8 | Bounder Bowles At Large | Trevor Mountjoy ( George Cole ) , successful estate agent , is happily married to the lovely Mary ( Rosalind Ayres ) . He goes home one day to find a drink waiting for him , and senses something is wrong . The couple's idyllic lifestyle has been shattered . Mary's freeloading brother Howard ( Peter Bowles ) has been released from prison after serving a two-year sentence for fraud . Worse , he has moved in with them . Howard plays for sympathy by leaning heavily on a stick and claiming to be a changed man , but Trevor is not too sure . He still calls him ' Trev ' for one thing . Finding the stick left round the house , he dashes round to the local pub , hoping to catch Howard out in a lie . But the wily bounder is prepared , telling Trevor the stick is a spare . . . Comedy writers are lucky to get one hit sitcom in their lifetimes . In the mid-'70's , Eric Chappell had two running concurrently on I . T . V . - ' Rising Damp ' and ' The Squirrels ' . If you think that is impressive , consider this - he pulled off the same trick a few years later with ' Duty Free ' and ' The Bounder ' . Peter Bowles had finished a long stint as rich hypochondriac ' Archie Glover ' in ' Only When I Laugh ' , and was keen to get his own show . Eric Chappell wrote this specially for him , in which he played suave confidence trickster ' Howard Booth ' , a sort of upmarket ' Mike Upchat ' from ' The Upchat Line / Connection ' . Like that other character , the show got much of its humour from Howard's spinning of elaborate lies , and then having to spin yet more to get out of trouble . ' Minder ' was running around this time , giving George Cole fans ( of whom I am one ) an extra chance to see their hero in action . ' Trevor Mountjoy ' is essentially a supporting role , but Cole made more of it than was there on the printed page . His looks of exasperation at Howard's behaviour are wonderful . Rosalind Ayres ( wife of Martin Jarvis ) played ' Mary ' in the first season , while Isla Blair was cast as lovely ' Laura Miles ' , a rich widow whom Howard has set his sights on . His pursuit of her became a running theme through the series ( speaking of Isla , I recall her going on the phone-in show ' Open Air ' in the ' 80's and cringing in embarrassment when a caller addressed her as ' Isla St . Clair ' ! ) . Ironically , Laura lost money by investing in Howard's company . The truth be known , there are not that many laughs in the first episode but it served a purpose in establishing the characters and premise . It improved sharply with the next episode . The opening violin theme was ' Winter ' from Vivaldi's ' The Four Seasons ' combined with an original composition by the late , talented Peter Knight ( also wrote the ' Duty Free ' signature ) . Funniest moment - Howard dancing gaily with Laura , unaware that Trevor and Mary are behind him , glowering . |
401,512 | 7,743,887 | 798,276 | 8 | Hello . Is that Interpol ? | ' The Two Ronnies ' was perhaps not the most imaginative title for a series starring two men with the first name of ' Ronnie ' , but we'll let that pass . Following a pair of one-off shows - ' The Ronnie Barker Yearbook ' ( with special guest star Ronnie Corbett ) and ' Ronnie Corbett In Bed ' ( with special guest star Ronnie Barker ) , the first episode proper of ' The Two Ronnies ' got underway , establishing a formula that was to endure for the next sixteen years . Following spoof news items , they moved onto a party sketch . In the first ( widely believed to have been written by Michael Palin and Terry Jones ) Barker plays a man who slaps Corbett whenever he tries to make small talk . The musical guest was a young Tina Charles , belting out ' River Deep , Mountain High ' in a dress that appeared to have been made from drawing room curtains . Corbett got two things right about her in his introduction ; firstly , she was very tiny and secondly , she did go on to become a star ( in 1975 , she topped the British pop charts with ' I Love To Love ' ) . The lecture sketch featured Barker speaking on behalf of a society for People Who Repeat Everything Twice . . . Everything Twice . The first of many serials was called ' Hampton Wick ' ( that's Cockney rhyming slang for . . . oh , work it out for yourself ) and starred the scrumptious Madeline Smith as ' Henrietta Beckett ' , the 21-year old governess to 36-year old ( ! ) Edward Hampton . Soon she and Edward are running around the orchard Benny Hill-fashion , but then Sir Geoffrey takes a shine to her and she has to fend off both their advances . Dismissed from the post , Henrietta heads for London , where she falls in with rogues who look suspiciously like ' Fagin ' and ' The Artful Dodger ' from ' Oliver Twist ' . Terry Hughes displays the flair for period comedy he would later bring to ' Ripping Yarns ' . 1971 was a good year for lustful Madeline fans ( of whom I was one ) as only a month before , she'd been seen in L . W . T . ' s ' Doctor At Large ' as Arthur Lowe's daughter ' Sue Maxwell ' . But , wait , what's this ? Another musical item ? Surely not . As this was not yet a proved success , the B . B . C . hedged its bets by including singers and imported novelty acts . ' New World ' - consisting of three men with big sideburns - sang ' Rose Garden ' . I never worked out which category they belonged in . I cannot comment on Ronnie's first chair monologue as I don't think I ever sat through a single one . In my house , the mere sight of Corbett in a relaxed position was sufficient to send me to the kitchen to make the tea . A sketch set in a hearing aid clinic followed . " I'd like a hearing aid please . " , says Corbett . " Pardon ? " , responds Barker . Of course , this is a forerunner of the famous optician sketch , with Barker playing a blind oculist . But its okay . But then comes ' Alfredo ' , a John Astin-lookalike able to gurn Sammy Davis Junior , spit ping pong balls at a music stand ( and catch them again in his mouth ) whilst seated at a drum kit , and race around in circles with a glass of beer on his head . According to the book ' And Its Goodnight From Him ' , Ronnie Corbett's wife Anne Hart recommended him to Terry Hughes . Easy to sneer now , but these abilities - bizarre though they are - make him more worthy of putting on television than half the people we see now . Eh Jade Goody ? For the big finale , we get Corbett as ' Big Jim Jehosophat ' and Barker as ' Fat-Belly Jones ' , American country and western singers who look like refugees from ' Woodstock ' , and perform numbers with lyrics that would make Madonna blush . These characters proved enormously popular and would make return appearances , as well as guest on other people's shows . For instance , ' Fat-Belly Jones ' did a duet with Lulu in 1975 . After more spoof news items , it was goodnight from them both . Cue Ronnie Hazlehurst's theme tune . Not bad for a first episode - even if some of the sketches ( notably the Interpol one quoted above ) had been done before in ' The Frost Report ' - but the best was yet to come . |
400,890 | 7,743,887 | 62,207 | 8 | How did you know she was a school teacher ? | Following a successful diamond robbery in London , criminal mastermind Paul Clifton ( Stanley Baker ) decides to pull off the crime of the century - the theft of three million pounds from a train heading from Glasgow to London . He tries to join forces with other gangs , but they object to the money going to Switzerland . Clifton agrees to share it out on British soil , using a deserted aircraft hangar as hideout . A thief called Robinson ( Frank Finlay ) stupidly attempts to phone his wife during the robbery , and thus the police gain a valuable lead . As the law closes in , Clifton and his gang endeavor to make a getaway . . . A fictionalised account of The Great Train Robbery of 1963 , this Stanley Baker / Michael Deeley production benefits from taut direction by Peter Yates and a first-rate supporting cast . Alongside Baker , there are old reliables such as James Booth , Barry Foster , Frank Finlay , George Sewell and William Marlowe , with the beautiful Joanna Pettet thrown in to provide some glamour . As Clifton's long-suffering wife , she has little to do other than complain about her husband's prolonged absences from the bedroom on account of him forever being in prison . The script by Edward Boyd , Peter Yates and George Markstein does not paint the main characters in any great detail , even Clifton himself ( based on Bruce Reynolds ) comes across as fairly one dimensional . His main nemesis is Inspector Langdon , and James Booth ( who had played ' Hook ' in Baker's earlier ' Zulu ' ) , cast against type for a change , gives far and away the best performance . The film opens with a thrilling robbery sequence culminating in a high-speed car chase through London . Its as exciting as you would expect from the future director of ' Bullitt ' . Good music from Johnny Keating too . ' Robbery ' , though , is a curiously old fashioned piece which at times has the flavour of an I . T . C . show such as ' The Saint ' ( and which Yates had contributed to ) . It was made in 1967 , the year that ' Bonnie & Clyde ' and ' The Dirty Dozen ' raised the bar for screen violence . The only real act of G . B . H . here is when the train driver is brutally coshed ( mirroring what happened to Jack Mills ) . No nudity or bad language is on display . Its interesting to reflect that had it been made only a few years later it would have been very different . Look at ' Get Carter ' and you will see what I mean . For all its faults , this gripping crime film is well worth seeking out and is vastly superior to the over-sentimentalized ' Buster ' starring Phil Collins . |
400,958 | 7,743,887 | 131,168 | 8 | Ah , there you are | This was Ronnie Barker's second sitcom ( his first being the comedy anthology series ' The Ronnie Barker Playhouse ' ) . It cast him as ' Lord Rustless ' , the doddery old buffoon ( based on the comedian Fred Emney ) who lives at Chrome Hall , grows mustard and cress for a living , and seems to be fond of women and having a tipple . His staff includes the pompous butler ' Badger ' ( Frank Gatliff ) , a toothless Cook ( Mary Baxter ) , the spinster secretary ' Mildred Bates ' ( Josephine Tewson ) , the ' between-floors parlour maid ' Effie ( Moira Foot ) , and a 100 year-old gardener called ' Dithers ' ( an unrecognisable David Jason ) . Effie never spoke ( only whispered inaudibly ) , while Dithers ' dialogue was pure Worzel Gummidge-style gobble-de-gook . Ronnie later described ' Rustless ' as his second favourite character , the first being ' Fletcher ' of ' Porridge ' . The show was the creation of Alan Owen , and grew out of an episode of ' Playhouse ' broadcast on / 68 entitled ' Ah , There You Are ' . Owen was unavailable to write the series , so the job went to Alan Ayckbourn ( under the name ' Peter Caulfield ' ) , later to become acclaimed as one of Britain's finest playwrights . The show was ground breaking in two notable respects ; firstly , Lord Rustless ' habit of addressing the audience directly ( a device later known as ' breaking the fourth wall ' ) , and the interruption of the plot with sketches ( some by Ronnie himself under his ' Gerald Wiley ' alias ) , many of which would be remade for ' The Two Ronnies ' . The second season had a different theme each week , such as ' Law ' , ' Cooking ' , ' Do-It-Yourself ' , and ' Music ' , with Rustless trying his hand at each but failing dismally . Two series were made in all . Having viewed these recently , I found much to enjoy , even though it had not stood up as well as I had hoped . The sketches were the best part of the programme , standing out like raisins in an undercooked scone . Ronnie stayed with L . W . T . for ' Six Dates With Barker ' , and then it was off to the B . B . C . for ' The Two Ronnies ' , ' Seven Of One ' , ' Porridge ' , and ' Open All Hours ' , every one a classic . But the end of ' Hark At Barker ' did not mean the end of Lord Rustless . Ronnie resurrected him - and his staff - for ' His Lordship Entertains ' in 1972 . It was an altogether different show ; the sketches were gone , Ronnie wrote the scripts himself , reformatting the concept so that Chrome Hall was now a country hotel . There was location filming , and other characters got to interact with Rustless and co . Ronnie later described it as ' Fawlty Towers Mark One ' . Not a trace of ' Entertains ' survives in the B . B . C . archives , which is indeed unfortunate as it is the better show . Luckily , the scripts are to be found in Ronnie's book ' All I Ever Wrote ' . |
401,417 | 7,743,887 | 77,020 | 8 | Pronounced ' azell | ' Hazell ' was the creation of Gordon Williams and Terry Venables ( yes , that Terry Venables ! ) . A sort of Cockney version of ' Philip Marlowe ' , James Hazell looked cool driving around ' 70's London in his Triumph Stag . His main adversary was Detective-Inspector ' Choc ' Minty , a hard-faced Scotsman who acted as a kind of ' Teal ' to Hazell's ' Saint ' . With its brassy opening theme and Bond-style titles , ' Hazell ' blasted onto I . T . V . with the force of a howitzer . The plots ran the gamut of ' 70's crime show clichés ( missing children , drug smuggling , bank raids ) , with Hazell often on the receiving end of a good hiding from some underworld felon . What lifted it above the average were the witty scripts and Nicholas Ball's laconic performance in the title role . At the time , he was married to ' Not The Nine O'Clock News ' star Pamela Stephenson . ' Hazell ' made him a star , but alas the fame it brought him was fleeting . Allegedly the series ended after only two seasons because Ball issued an ultimatum - do it on film or else . The prospect of ' Hazell ' becoming a Euston Films Production was certainly intriguing , but alas it wasn't to be . Williams and Venables later confessed that they thought him too young for the role anyway , their preferred choices were John Bindon and Michael Elphick . I . T . V . briefly considered reviving the series a few years ago , but decided against it on the grounds that it was ' dated and sexist ' . Haven't times changed ! |
401,694 | 7,743,887 | 131,158 | 8 | The best way to get people off the dole is to stop giving it to them ! | One year after ' The Young Ones ' and ' The Comic Strip Presents ' launched a new wave of British comedians on an unsuspecting world , Granada T . V . brought out ' Alfresco ' . Despite starring Ben Elton , Stephen Fry , Hugh Laurie , Robbie Coltrane , Emma Thompson and Siobhan Redmond , it doesn't seemed to have burned itself into the national consciousness the way those other shows did , possibly because it felt more like a Channel 4 show than an I . T . V . one , and the obvious canned laughter killed many of the sketches stone dead . Beginning each week with a cheeky saxophone arrangement of ' I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles ' , ' Alfresco ' wandered widely between the borders of the inspired and the inane . Among the former was a spoof U . S . variety show , hosted by the giggly , vacuous singer ' Sherri ' ( Thompson ) who announces a tribute to The Beatles and manages to forget the drummer's name ( Ringo ) , Fry's pompous doctor unable to grasp why his Sikh patient is wearing a turban ( he thinks its bandages ) , and Thompson's fussy librarian revealing to bookworm Laurie the twist endings of the mysteries he intends to read . ' The Pretend Pub ' was a spoof soap peopled by oddballs with names like Ezzer , Bezzer , Lord Stezzer , Shizzer and so on . The off the wall humour Fry and Laurie later used in their own show was first in evidence here . Emma Thompson made the most impact on yours truly , mainly because she was stunningly beautiful . I can remember not finding Elton very funny though , sketch comedy was not really his forte , and he was overshadowed by the others . He would later find his niche with ' Saturday Live ' and ' The Man From Auntie ' . Critics at the time gave the show a pasting , one even renamed it ' Al-fiasco ' . It also came under fire from alternative comic Alexei Sayle . " Posh people can have anything they want . " , he said , " Even their own satirical show on Granada Television . " . Well , compared to the vile mess that was ' O . T . T . ' in which Sayle was a regular , ' Alfresco ' was ' Monty Python ' standard . Given that many of its cast went onto become major stars ( and Oscar winners in Thompson's case ) , its surprising how ' Alfresco ' has so far eluded a D . V . D . release . |
400,794 | 7,743,887 | 699,342 | 8 | Shelley's Watergate ! | Shelley has to come up with a sales campaign for a new range of Instant Paella . The stuff proves hard to market as it is virtually tasteless . In a meeting , he inadvertently insults his boss Cyril ( John Barron ) , not realising the comment has been captured on tape . When a colleague tells him this , he is horrified . Fearful that he may lose his job , he breaks into the office at night to steal the offending tape , but mistakenly steals the wrong one . . . ' Shelley ' was never at its best when the main character was seen working . The scenes at the advertising agency are mildly funny at best . It is only when Shelley goes back to Pangloss Road does any real humour appear . One of Shelley's workmates is played by David Warwick , who appeared in the first season of ' The Fall & Rise Of Reginald Perrin ' as Reggie's actor son , Mark . Also from that series is good old John ' C . J . ' Barron , reprising the role of ' Cyril ' . Funniest Moment - Shelley being woken at 3 a . m . by Fran and Mrs . H returning home drunk from the disco , singing Boney M's ' Brown Girl In The Ring ' . That song drove me up the wall too so I can well understand why he feels miffed ! |
400,919 | 7,743,887 | 344,703 | 8 | Desert Island Movies | I . T . V . ' s ' Play It Again ' was a popular daytime show in which celebrities picked clips from their favourite films , and explained what they meant to them . Amongst those taking part were Dick Emery , Alun Armstrong , Dave Prowse ( of ' Star Wars ' fame ) , Larry Grayson , Joan Bakewell , Derek Jacobi and , in her final television appearance , Hattie Jacques . The interviewer , Tony Bilbow , had a natural charm and got celebrities to open up simply by putting them at ease . To give an example , he extracted from Hattie a heartfelt admission that she was fundamentally unhappy with the ' fat woman ' comedy roles she'd played over the years . Shocking stuff at the time . ' Play It Again ' was hardly groundbreaking , but it provided the ideal accompaniment to a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit at the end of a hard day's household chores . Compared to the salacious rubbish currently on daytime television ( ' Loose Women ' anyone ? ) , it was brilliant . I . T . V . bosses , take note , the simplest ideas are usually the best . |
400,830 | 7,743,887 | 164,284 | 8 | No-one Sez It Better Than Les | After coming to prominence on ' Opportunity Knocks ' in the late ' 60's , Les Dawson was given his own show by Yorkshire Television , which combined sketches , stand-up and music and ran well into the ' 70's . Given that Les ' comic persona was that of a misanthrope , it seemed strange to see him in a show with dancing girls , glitzy sets , and The Syd Lawrence Orchestra . ' Sez Les ' was initially biased towards international guest stars such as Trini Lopez , with as many as three musical acts on each show . But , as time went on , the producers gave Les more and more to do . Things perked up considerably with the arrival of Roy Barraclough , who would eventually develop with Les the talkative housewives Cissy and Ada . John Cleese , fresh from ' Monty Python's Flying Circus ' , became a regular for a time , and he and Les made a surprisingly effective comedy team . One of their best sketches was a surreal item set in an office where the staff vie for promotion by constantly trying to assassinate one another . It wouldn't have seemed out of place in ' Python ' . Then there was ' Superflop ' , an incompetent superhero who later became the subject of a comic strip in ' Look-In ' . Good fun . |
400,737 | 7,743,887 | 699,345 | 8 | He came in a meteor and they can't find the antidote ! | When Shelley fails to come home one night after working behind the bar of ' The Victory ' , Mrs . Hawkins tells Fran not to worry . " Wherever he is , he won't be with a woman ! " . But that's just where he is - in bed with the sexy Angie . They have not had sex though . Shelley goes home and comes clean with Fran . She accepts his story , far fetched as it sounds , but when he jokes about it she loses her temper and hits him in the groin . Cue invective from Shelley . . . A notch or two down from previous episodes , ' Gainfully Employed ' throws away an interesting comic situation . It cheats too . We never get to see Shelley in his Nelson gear for one thing . Nor is it explained why Angie took him home and let him sleep in her bed just to do nothing with him . On finding that his clothes are back at ' The Victory ' , Shelley panics as all he has is his ' Nelson ' costume . Yet when he next see him ( walking into a newsagent ) he is wearing normal clothes . Where did they come from ? Luckily , Josephine Tewson saves the day as the trouble-making landlady . Her excitement at the thought of a big bust-up between Shelley and Fran is hilarious . Unfortunately , the episode climaxes with a posh dinner party . ' Shelley ' was never very funny when he became upwardly mobile . Nice to see John Barron - ' C . J . ' in the ' Reginald Perrin ' series - as ' Cyril ' though . ADDENDA In the novelisation , it says Shelley borrowed t-shirt , jeans and a mackintosh off Angie . So that's cleared that one up . |
401,517 | 7,743,887 | 164,270 | 8 | Thick as thieves ! | ' Mr . Big ' started out as a one-off ' Comedy Playhouse ' broadcast in 1974 . It proved popular enough to warrant not only one series , but two . The late Peter Jones , best remembered as ' Mr . Fenner ' in ' The Rag Trade ' , played ' Eddie ' , a would-be mastermind who dreamt of pulling off the ultimate crime , hence the theme song : " We're In The Money " . He shared a house in East London with Prunella Scales , who played wife and fellow thief ' Dolly ' . The tone of the humour is established at the start of the first episode when she walks in with two heavy-looking carrier bags . Asked where she has been , she replies : " Shoplifting for the weekend . " . In fact , everything in their house was stolen . Whenever Eddie needed cigarettes , he got Dolly to go out and steal him some . Also in the house were their children ' Ginger ' ( played by ' Dad's Army''s Ian Lavender ) , an idiot who usually messed up Eddie's plans , and the gorgeous ' Norma ' ( Carol Hawkins of ' The Fenn Street Gang ' ) . We never quite found out what was going on between these two . They were brother and sister , yet were often in bed together . As incest was not permissible in ' 70's sitcoms ( even David Nobbs had to drop an affair between the Geoffrey Palmer and Sally-Jane Spencer characters when adapting ' The Fall & Rise Of Reginald Perrin ' ) , its reasonable to assume that nothing naughty was going on . Each week , Eddie would come up with a daring new criminal plot , such as ripping-off a bookies , and put it into action , using Dolly , Ginger and Norma , but this being a sitcom , things would go wrong and then they had to escape before the police caught them . A far cleverer man would have dropped these dimwits , but Eddie stood by them . You must bear in mind this was made long before sitcoms about losers became fashionable . Peter Jones co-wrote the scripts with Christopher Bond , and very funny they were too . To get an idea of what ' Mr . Big ' was like , watch the Sid James film ' The Big Job ' ( 1965 ) . I haven't seen the show since its original broadcast , so cannot tell you if it has aged well or not . It was never repeated , and U . K . Gold has yet to show any interest . There are no plans to put it out on D . V . D . I would like to see it again if only to marvel at the superb comic timing of Jones , Scales , Lavender and , of course , Hawkins ( as well as admire her wonderful legs ! ) |
400,723 | 7,743,887 | 199,192 | 8 | Smile . . . You're on Candid Camera ! | Created by America's Allen Funt , ' Candid Camera ' was exported to Britain in 1960 , with Bob Monkhouse as host . The best remembered prank was the ' car-with-no-engine ' , perpetrated by arch-joker Jonathan Routh . My earliest memory , though , is the ' 70's version , hosted by its producer , the late Peter Dulay , who occasionally participated in the pranks . It went out on Saturday nights , and was often hysterically funny . I've give you a few examples ; a man in a phone box panics when it suddenly rises into the air ; a milkman tries to interest regulars in multi-coloured milk ; a secretary instructed to search a desk for important information finds it contains unlimited junk ; a man goes into a shop and eats a goldfish in front of shocked customers ; a top record producer hears an astonishing new idea for a concept album - a tribute to the world's greatest jugglers ; a woman watching snooker on television is frightened out of her wits when a ball smashes the screen and a player peers out of the set , sheepishly asking for it back ; a blind man is used as a car park attendant ; a nude woman goes for a secretarial job interview , and , my favourite , a man checking out of a hotel has the catch on his suitcase break , enabling staff to see it is full of stolen towels and cutlery . ' Candid Camera ' was made on film , with no studio audience cackling maniacally over the best bits . Dulay made a perfectly relaxed and amiable host . The head pranksters were initially Arthur Atkins and Sheila Burnette . The final season was in 1976 , retitled ' Jonathan Routh & Candid Camera ' to reflect the fact that its most famous prankster had returned . Routh's marvellously lugubrious face never cracked a smile despite the total absurdities of the situations in which he found himself . After the series ended , the title ' Candid Camera ' was never again used on British television , but ' Game For A Laugh ' , ' Beadle's About ' , and ' Trigger-Happy T . V . ' all successfully followed its trail . It could be said to be television's first reality show . |
401,479 | 7,743,887 | 1,162,603 | 8 | After The Funeral | Else has finally passed on , leaving Alf alone in the world . Well , not quite alone . After the funeral , he - along with Rita , Marigold , Arthur , Mr & Mrs . Johnson , a rabbi , an old lady and landlady Mrs . Hollingbery - return to the Garnett's flat for tea . Her death means that half of Alf's pension is now gone , although he still requires the same amount of gas and electricity , he will have far less money for the bills . Arthur points out that when a rich man dies his family becomes automatically richer through inheritance . Alf's reaction is not what you would expect from a die-hard Tory . Mrs . Hollingbery shocks the gathering by revealing that Alf voted Labour in the council elections and got her to do likewise . Alf proposes a special ' winter ' allowance for pensioners ( he was ahead of his time . It was introduced by the Labour Government in 1997 ) . She then delivers a tirade of hate against the idea of black people being buried in the same cemeteries as white , causing Rita to lose her temper . When Dandy Nichols declined the opportunity to participate fully in the sixth season of ' Till Death Us Do Part ' , Johnny Speight toyed with the idea of killing Else off . Fortunately , he did not go through with it , and the door was left open for her return . But in 1986 she finally went to join the infinite . This was the first episode recorded after the actress ' sad death . Unlike ' Only Fools & Horses ' and the passing of Grandad , we do not see the actual funeral , just the aftermath . As the characters drink tea ( or in Alf and Arthur's case something stronger ) and eat sandwiches , they talk about various subjects , including death . Else is more or less forgotten as the episode progresses . It has some amusing moments but there is - as you would expect - an air of melancholia about the show . Carmel McSharry appeared as an unnamed woman in a pub in the first series . ' Mrs . Hollingbery ' was clearly intended to replace ' the silly old moo ' by giving Alf a good argument at every turn . By the end of this edition , she wants him to move out , fearing the sexual advances he may make while under the influence of alcohol . She changes her mind , of course . Ken Campbell , who plays the garrulous ' Mr . Johnson ' , sadly passed away recently . Funniest moment - following her racist tirade , Mrs . Hollingbery is kissed on the cheek by Marigold ! ( This gag may have been inspired by a moment in ' All In The Family ' when Archie Bunker ( Carroll O'Connor ) got a similar peck from none other than Sammy Davis Jr . ) The episode ends on a poignant moment , with Alf gazing sadly at Else's empty wheelchair . His eyes brimming with tears , he mutters for the very last time : " Silly old moo . . . " . |
400,808 | 7,743,887 | 296,443 | 8 | Streakers are cowards . If they were brave , they'd walk ! | Likable Liverpuddlian comic Tom O'Connor came to prominence on Granada's ' The Comedians ' , and like Charlie Williams and Jim Bowen , progressed to game shows and variety specials such as ' London Night Out ' and ' Wednesday At Eight ' . His humour was mainly observational , often cleverly pointing out the differences between the past and the present . In 1984 , he joined the B . B . C . to make three seasons of a sketch-led show , each edition built round a topic such as education , cinema , hobbies and so on . Looking at it now its hard to believe it originally went out post-watershed . Yet not an expletive was used , nor body function joke made . It could easily have filled the slot on B . B . C . - 1 after ' Songs Of Praise ' . As was the case with ' Dave Allen At Large ' , the sketches were the weak point , though helped by support from Derek Griffiths ( what an underrated talent ) and old ' Manuel ' himself - Andrew Sachs . Ex-'Top Of The Pops ' dancer Cherry Gillespie provided glamour , much as she had done in the previous year's Bond movie ' Octopussy ' . O'Connor was on safer ground with his stand-up act . A regular item had him perched on a stool , knocking back whisky and telling jokes to a smirking bartender . For instance : " A bag of chips now costs ten bob in real money . Years ago , you couldn't carry home ten bob's worth of chips . The man would have to shut the shop afterwards . And the police would come round to find out where you got the money ! " . O'Connor's humour was obviously not aimed at the young , which made him a victim of the early 90's purge that rid the airwaves of all comedians lacking a toilet wall vocabulary . Bland the show may have been , but it was watchable . The 80's was probably the last decade in which family comedy was acceptable on prime-time television . Now everything is ' dark ' and ' cutting edge ' , and that's a shame . |
400,632 | 7,743,887 | 1,420,338 | 8 | Reggie's Return | Like many , when I heard the B . B . C . was proposing to remake ' The Fall & Rise of Reginald Perrin ' ( which ran from 1976-78 ) , I was horrified . We have become used to bad Hollywood remakes ( particularly sci-fi ones , which drench themselves in C . G . I . in a futile effort to conceal their lack of originality ) , but now British television is getting in on the act . The precedent was set last year when the Corporation served up a tepid , logic-free ' reimagining ' of Terry Nation's ' Survivors ' which if nothing else only further enhanced the original's reputation . My hostility subsided a little when I learnt that David Nobbs would be involved in the project , working alongside ' Men Behaving Badly ' creator Simon Nye . Nobbs ' reasoning ( as explained on his website ) was that we needed a new version because the world had changed so much since 1976 . I then re-read the books and found there was a lot of funny stuff in them not used by the original , such as Reggie's daughter Linda's incestuous relationship with his fanatical right-wing brother-in-law Jimmy . A remake therefore seemed perfectly viable . So what did I make of the first show ? Alright . Not bad , but above average for B . B . C . - 1 these days . Reggie now works for ' Groomtech ' , a firm specialising in products for men such as after-shaves and razors ( ' Sunshine Desserts ' featured briefly as Reggie passed it on the way to work ) . Like the Reggie of old , the train is always 11 minutes late , he has a domineering boss ( ' Chris Jackson ' ) , two annoying yes-men are always floating about the office , and Reggie is bored by the futility of his existence . The jokes may be new , but the premise is the same . Clunes was good , making no effort to copy Leonard Rossiter , and delivered his one-liners with the right degree of venom . I laughed when he dreamt of telling the man on the train : " Your shoes are on fire , and I'm sleeping with your wife ! " . Keeping Reggie's flights of fancy was another wise move . However , they erred in not properly establishing a starting point for Reggie's madness . The first episode of the original began with a typical day in Reggie's life , then after insulting his mother-in-law everything changes . They should have done that here . Reggie instead came across as unnecessarily rude . We were not given a chance to see just what he was rebelling against . No awful mother-in-law , but a dippy secretary ( a stereotype even in 1976 ) . The original Reggie once claimed that the sight of a pumice stone would be likely to give him hysterics . Unfortunately , the new version was saddled with the impossible job of marketing it for the man who likes to look good . He also fancied the pants off attractive colleague Jasmine Strauss ( Lucy Liemann ) . The loving relationship the old Reggie had with Elisabeth ( Pauline Yates ) has been replaced by a cold , formal one with the independent Nicola ( Fay Ripley ) . The laugh-track should have been dispensed with . At times I thought I was watching ' A Sharp Intake Of Breath ' starring David Jason ( it was that intrusive ) . Also why has the late , great Ronnie Hazlehurst not been credited with the theme music ? These flaws aside , I did like it and will be watching next week . But it could and should have been better . |
400,842 | 7,743,887 | 196,303 | 8 | This is ' What's on Next ? ' . Write to your M . P . about it ! | ' What's on Next ? ' was a quick-fire comedy sketch show which originally went out in the old ' Opportunity Knocks ! ' slot of 6 . 45 P . M . on Monday nights . As Gwynplaine F . MacIntyre has noted , it was highly derivative of the hit U . S . show ' Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In ' , with comedians poking their heads out of garish sets , uttering corny quips , pulling faces , and disappearing . It scored over its inspiration , however , by not making the comedy topical , although if viewed today would certainly be regarded as ' very ' 70's ' . The late William Franklyn headed up this pack of jokers , his urbane manner made him a suitable figurehead , rather like Kenneth Horne . His patter would often be interrupted by Anna Dawson , playing a nymphomaniac traffic warden . Sandra Dickinson was the token totty ( replaced by the equally sexy Linda Lou Allen in Season 2 ) . Barry Cryer , Bob Todd , and Jim Davidson ( fresh from ' New Faces ' ) made up the rest . In one sketch , a depressed Andonia Katsaros says : " My husband drives me to drink ! " to which Dickinson replies : " Your're lucky . I have to walk ! " . In another , Davidson announced : " I'm a verger ! " . " If you believe that , you'll believe anything ! " , said Cryer , dressed as Groucho Marx for a reason which escapes me . The show also featured ( in its first season , at any road ) regular guest spots from Pam Ayres and Hinge & Bracket . I can recall being baffled by the latter . Were they real women or not ? Season 2 saw the show move to an 8 . 00 slot on Monday nights , and cut down to a slimmer half-hour . With Pam , Dame Hilda and Dr . Evadne gone , it wasn't quite as much fun , but provided a welcome bridge between ' Coronation Street ' and ' World In Action ' . Yes , half the jokes were old , the other half hurried . But nobody , least of all the viewers , seemed to care . Rather like the later ' Russ Abbot's Madhouse ' , ' Next ' gave the impression that the cast were enjoying themselves hugely , and making something worthwhile out of very little . |
400,933 | 7,743,887 | 71,613 | 8 | Blakey-By-The-Sea | When you watch a Reg Varney film , you shouldn't expect Fellini . The third and last cinematic outing for Stan Butler and co . came out at the end of 1973 , several months after the television series had ended . Stan and Jack are ( finally ) dismissed from the bus depot and finish up at a surprisingly sunny looking holiday camp in North Wales . As was the case with ' Mutiny ' , there's a fair amount of product placement , in fact the ' Pontins ' name is visible in every other shot . In a mind-bending coincidence , Blakey is there too , as Security Inspector . Arthur Mullard and Queenie Watts play ' Wally ' and ' Lil Briggs ' , their characters from Ronald Wolfe and Ronald Chesney's other hit L . W . T . sitcom ' Romany Jones ' . Wilfred ' Steptoe ' Brambell crops up as a randy pensioner ( look out for the moment when he slips on the dance floor . It looks accidental to me ) . As you'd expect from a film of this type , subtlety is virtually non-existent ; the script contains almost every seaside postcard joke written . ' Little Arthur ' has aged considerably since his last appearance , meaning we are thankfully spared all those ' potty ' gags . I wonder if Sir Fred Pontin was happy to see the name of his business linked to exploding toilets , bare bottoms and randy nurses . If nothing else . ' Holiday ' reminds one how poorer the television series was when Reg Varney and Michael Robbins left . It was good to see the cast reunited for one final romp . A fourth film - ' Fun On The Buses ' - was planned , but never got made . Don't watch if you want great comedy , but if you want a good dirty laugh , tune in . Compared to The Farelly Brothers films , this is Noel Coward . Funniest moment - Stan driving under a low bridge , terrifying everyone on the upper deck ! |
401,340 | 7,743,887 | 756,706 | 8 | Flawed Yet Fascinating | This was basically three programmes in one ; a ' Goodies ' reunion special ( wasn't it great to see Bill , Tim and Graeme in their old office again ? ) , a documentary tracing the history of ' The Goodies ' television series , and an ' I Love The ' 70's ' style nostalgia fest . The first two were fine , but the third was a waste of time . Who cares what Emma Kennedy thinks ? With most of ' The Goodies ' currently unavailable on D . V . D . , this provided a golden opportunity to see clips from as yet unreleased episodes such as ' Goodies Rule O . K . ' . Its easy to forget just how big ' The Goodies ' were back in the ' 70's . I've still got the books and records . Nice that Jim Franklin finally got some credit for his part in the ' Goodies ' success story . Welcome though this was , I can't help wondering why it didn't lead to a comprehensive rerun of the series ( aside from the ' Winter Olympics ' episode , shown on B . B . C . - 2 in January ) . It seems odd that B . B . C . - 2 can make this , yet won't repeat the series itself . They're a bunch of teapots ! |
400,868 | 7,743,887 | 956,742 | 8 | Off To Brighton ! | The Gang are shopping for their impending trip to Brighton . Witnessing Sharon being propositioned by a randy supermarket manager , Eric loses his cool and rushes to her defence . Sharon is so impressed at his gallantry she reinstates their relationship . The Gang are thrilled . At Brighton , they have a whale of a time . But Sharon and Eric decide not to return on the same train with the others . Posing as a married couple , they prepare to spend the night together . . . A sweet Esmonde / Larbey episode , and one that belies the myth of the ' permissive society ' . Eric and Sharon come close to making love , but decide not to go through with it . Unfortunately , when they get home , Duffy's parents and Sharon's mother are convinced that they have done so , and a row breaks out . Then Dennis turns up , and makes the situation worse by handing over wedding presents ( the ring on Eric's finger has fooled him into thinking they are now married . Eric only wore it to foll the hotel staff ) . Nice location filming in Brighton , with Frankie taking the opportunity to re stage the D-Day landings on the beach . Funniest moment - Eric and Sharon being served by a sniggering waiter , played by Bob Todd of ' The Benny Hill Show ' . |
400,837 | 7,743,887 | 86,673 | 8 | Britain's Answer to ' Westworld ' ? | Sometimes its possible to create a wonderful television series , and still contrive a mighty flop . Such was the case with ' Bootle Saddles ' , a series that poked gentle fun at British Wild West enthusiasts . Men from all walks of life - bank managers , solicitors , doctors - who choose to spend their weekends dressed as cowboys , pretending to shoot one another with toy Colt 45's . Set in ' Apache Wells ' , a Wild West theme park run by northerner Percy " Call me Jesse ! " James , his wife and sexy daughter Betty , it featured a motley group of characters learning the ways of the Old West . The quality of the writing and acting was extremely good . Gordon Rollings made one of his final appearances as ' The Kid ' , an elderly man dressed in black who never spoke and walked around with a gun in one hand and ear trumpet in the other . A one-joke show perhaps , but a funny one . The B . B . C . didn't seem to know what to do with it , and put it out on B . B . C . - 2 where it was unjustly ignored . It deserved a far better reception . |
400,847 | 7,743,887 | 956,747 | 8 | Last Tango In Fenn Street | Having been to see Ken Russell's ' The Music Lovers ' , Eric and Sharon go back to the Duffy family flat . Eric is feeling romantically inclined , but when Sharon spurns his advances they row . Dennis turns up , telling them Frankie is in hospital , having bayoneted himself in the foot . While visiting him , Eric meets and is attracted to Staff Nurse Mary Taylor . He asks her to go on a date . She accepts . Feeling cramped by always having to take girls back to his family home , Eric persuades Dennis to loan him his flat for the evening . Then Maureen gets wind of the situation . . . Esmonde and Larbey in good form here . With the exception of Craven , the whole gang are featured . Frankie's mother is absent though ; we are told that the shock of seeing her ' little soldier ' in a hospital bed caused her to faint , knocking herself out cold ( why I do not know as she had seen him in hospital before - in the ' Please Sir ! ' episode ' Stitches & Hitches ' . Justine Lord , who plays the sexy Irish staff nurse , was also ' Hilary ' in ' Two In Clover ' and ' Sonia ' in the classic ' Prisoner ' episode ' The Girl Who Was Death ' . Ian Stirling , cast as Frankie's C . O . , went on to become a continuity announcer for Westward Television . Funniest moment - Frankie threatening to hang himself with the cord of his dressing gown . |
400,733 | 7,743,887 | 918,015 | 8 | If that's a Scientologist , I'll serve him with chips ! | Shelley's attempts to prepare a dinner party meet with continual interruptions ; first , a Jehovah's Witness rings the doorbell and refuses to go away , then an elderly neighbour called Mrs . Ratcliffe asks him to fix her shelf . Mrs . Ratcliffe is , unfortunately , senile , and thinks that all the women at that address - Mrs . H included - are on the game . Jim thinks up an ingenious way to get these time wasters off his back - he introduces them to each other . The party begins before Shelley has had time to clear up the flat , so his guests helpfully oblige by doing it for him . It ends in disaster . A row breaks out when two guests let slip that they have been having an affair . . . The final episode of Series 1 ( though as I've stated in earlier reviews it was not broadcast as such ) owes a small debt to the classic ' Porridge ' episode ' No Peace For The Wicked ' , though its nowhere near as funny . As the interruptions increase , so Shelley's anger rises , though he stops short of actually throttling someone ( as Fletcher did ) . Spot The Future Star : yes , that is Alan Rickman as the hippie-like ' Clive ' . The man who would go on to star in ' Die Hard ' , ' Robin Hood Prince Of Thieves ' and ' Galaxy Quest ' amongst other hit films is seen here in a minor role . A major problem is that we never actually see the blazing row the party degenerates into . We are simply told about it . Obnoxious Ned is present , and makes matters worse by lecherously winking at Trish and exclaiming : ' Everybody's doing it ! " . As the party takes place off-screen , we are thankfully spared a return appearance by David Pugh as ' Ned ' . One good thing to be said for it , I suppose . The best bits are Shelley's interaction with the Jehovah's Witness ( haven't we all wanted to tell them to go forth and multiply ? ) and Mrs . Ratcliffe . Funniest moment - Jim telling the former to leave the premises , adding that if he comes back he'll turn him into a pillar of salt ! |
401,172 | 7,743,887 | 800,478 | 8 | The Price Of Love | Mr . Cromwell has a new secretary - the sexy Miss Patricia Knightley . The whole school falls under her spell , in particular Mr . Price , who is reminded of a girl from the Valleys called ' Blodwyn ' . Each time he claps eyes on her , he hears a Welsh male voice choir singing ' All Through The Night ' . So he tries to woo her . But there's a snag - Patricia is a ' friend ' of the Chairman Of The Board Of Govenors . . . Back in the days when he was funny , Harry Enfield did a sketch in which ' Kevin ' and ' Perry ' are smitten by a good-looking teacher , played by Lynsey Baxter . Here is an earlier version of the same idea , penned by Geoff Rowley and Andy Baker . Madeleine Mills will be familiar to ' On The Buses ' fans because she appeared in three episodes ; ' Vacancy for Inspector ' , ' The Inspector's Niece ' and ' Going Steady ' . She was certainly sexy , and its not hard to believe she could mesmerize an entire school's menfolk . This is a different ' niece ' to the one the Chairman had in ' The Pruning Of Hedges ' ; the other one was called ' Rita ' and was played by Wendy Richard . Richard Davies walks off with the acting honours here , his big scene when he angrily confronts Cromwell and the Chairman is powerfully done . Of course his passion for Patricia goes unrequited . But there's a happy ending as the teachers toast Potter's birthday in the staff room . With the series end imminent , it seems symbolic . Funniest moment - Price and Patricia having a quiet drink together . " Bottoms up ! " , exclaims the secretary . Jumping to the wrong conclusion , Price replies : " Oh yes , please ! " . |
400,749 | 7,743,887 | 595,648 | 8 | Watching the spies go by ! | Hancock is standing idly on a street corner when a policeman strolls up . Tony chats about the inclement British weather ( for which he blames atom bomb testing ) . The policeman has observed Hancock on the same street corner every day for weeks , and wonders what he is up to . Hancock claims to be merely ' people-spotting ' . Like train-spotting , only with people . He claims to be fascinated by the human character . After an altercation with an elderly news vendor ( Wilfrid Lawson ) , Hancock spots what seems to be a man furtively passing an envelope to a woman . Convinced he has just witnessed spies at work ferrying stolen secrets , he tries to contact M15 . . . This was one of a number of episodes written by Godfrey Harrison , writer of the popular B . B . C . radio comedy ' A Life Of Bliss ' . Harrison was infamous for his late delivery of scripts , and one suspects he was still working on this one as the cameras started rolling . The dialogue is good , but the basic plot of Hancock becoming an agent for Her Majesty's Secret Service ( ' Number 13 - codename Canteen ' ) is silly and unbelievable . Why does Colonel Beresford ( Geoffrey Keen ) so readily accept Hancock's claim ? And whose canteen does Tony succeed in reaching by phone ? M15's ? There is some fun to be had watching Hancock being ' James Bond ' even if it does fly in the face of his long-held desire to create realistic comedy . I half expected him to wake up at the end and find the whole experience to have been a dream . Geoffrey Keen and James Villiers went on to appear in bona fide Bond movies - the former was Minister of Defence ' Sir Frederick Gray ' in several Roger Moore films including ' Moonraker ' , while the latter ( for one film only ) portrayed ' Chief Of Staff ' in ' For Your Eyes Only ' in 1981 . Sheila Burnette is one of the canteen women who humours Hancock by making him think he is talking to someone in M15 . Funniest moment - allocated the number 13 by Colonel Beresford , Hancock asks what happened to his predecessor . " I can't tell you that ! " , says the Colonel , " And you won't find out from his widow either ! " . |
400,731 | 7,743,887 | 166,033 | 8 | To be or not to be - that's what I want to know ! | Anglia Television is chiefly remembered today for ' Roald Dahl's Tales Of The Unexpected ' , ' The World Of Survival ' and ' Sale Of The Century ' ( " Now From Norwich - Its The Quiz Of The Week ! " ) hosted by the one and only Nicholas Parsons . In 1977 , the station forayed into the realm of sitcoms with ' Backs To The Land ' which attempted to do for the Women's Land Army what ' Dad's Army ' did for the Home Guard . The year is 1940 , and young women from all walks of life are recruited to work in the countryside to do the jobs the menfolk did before going off to the front . Milking cows , feeding chickens , baling hay , that sort of thing . The three central characters in ' Backs ' are débutante ' Daphne Finch-Beauchamp ' , cheerful Cockney ' Jenny Dabb ' and down-to-Earth Jewish girl ' Shirley Bloom ' . They are sent to Crabtree Farm , Norfolk , owned by the tight-fisted and cantankerous ' Farmer Tom Whitlow ' . The show that followed was a kind of hybrid of ' Two In Clover ' ( townies struggling to adjust to the country way of life ) and the ' All Is Safely Gathered In ' episode of ' Dad's Army ' . The scripts were by David Climie , co-author of the hit Derek Nimmo monastic sitcom ' Oh Brother ! ' , and adaptor of P . G . Wodehouse's tales for ' Wodehouse Playhouse ' , which starred John Alderton and ( initially ) Pauline Collins . Climie wrote a novelisation based on ' Backs ' , and later did one for Ronnie Corbett's ' Sorry ! ' . Anne Shelton sang the patriotic title theme , which went something like : ' Backs To The Land Girls / There's So Much That You Can Do / Lending A Hand Girls / Britain Is Proud Of You ' . Anne later sang the theme to another wartime sitcom , the B . B . C . ' s ill-fated ' Then Churchill Said To Me ' , which starred Frankie Howerd . After one season , Marilyn Galsworthy ( who played ' Daphne ' ) left ( to appear in ' The Spy Who Loved Me ' as that unfortunate secretary who falls into a pool where she is eaten alive by sharks ) , and was replaced by the equally sexy Pippa Page as showgirl ' Bunny Burroughs ' . Three seasons were made in total . I have not seen ' Backs ' since its original broadcast , but remember it as being pretty good . No ' Dad's Army ' though . The late John Stratton was often hilarious as the miserable farmer . What damaged the show in my view was the annoying ( and somewhat obvious ) use of canned laughter . Sometimes a laugh track can improve a sitcom ( how Johnny Speight's ' Till Death ' in 1981 could have used one ! ) , but here it had exactly the opposite effect . Every line uttered on screen was accompanied by patently artificial tittering , giggling and chortling . The end result was like watching a film in the company of a senile relative who finds everything he / she sees amusing . Another problem the series had was that Phillippa Howell ( Shirley ) and Terese Stevens ( Jenny ) apparently did not get along in real life , and disparaged one another in the popular press . Farmer Whitlow's sons appeared in the first series , and were played by two real-life brothers - Michael and David Troughton . Michael went on to be ' Piers Fletcher-Dervish ' in ' The New Statesman ' . ' Backs To The Land ' had tremendous possibilities , but the canned laughter unfortunately killed much of the humour stone dead . A great shame . |
400,888 | 7,743,887 | 86,703 | 8 | Britain's Answer To ' Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice ' ? | On a Sky One retro programme ( ' T . V . Years ' ) a while back , disc jockey Mark Radcliffe said : " The only thing I can remember about ' Duty Free ' is that it was bloody awful . " . Peter Kay was not impressed either : " I hear they're going to ban ' Duty Free ' next year . They should have banned it after the first series . " . Ho , ho . We can take it then that these gents were not among the ten million or so fans who watched back in 1984-86 . Its popularity was so great that at one point it challenged ' Coronation Street ' . It was written by Eric Chappell ( in collaboration with his secretary Jean Warr ) , author of ' Rising Damp ' , ' The Squirrels ' , and ' Only When I Laugh ' , and many other hit sitcoms . The premise is this ; Amy ( Gwen Taylor ) and David Pearce ( Keith Barron ) are in Spain on a package holiday , spending his redundancy money ( nice topical touch . Everybody had redundancy money in those days it seemed ) . David , suffering from a mid-life crisis , becomes infatuated with Linda Cochrane ( Joanna Van Gyseghem ) , the elegant wife of Robert ( Neil Stacy ) , a stuffy ultra-English type forever moaning about the behaviour of the German guests at the hotel . David's infatuation is reciprocated ( the Cochrane's marriage being a sham ) to the point where he and Linda contemplate running away to start a new life together . But it never happens . Over the course of the series , events conspire to derail the romance , and in the last episode David meekly returns to his wife's arms . The first thing to be said here is that it is no ' Rising Damp ' , but then neither were Chappell's other shows . It owed a debt to those old British stage farces in which trouserless men were forever hiding in wardrobes and pretty girls scampered about in their underwear . You had to wonder why Amy did not simply call a halt to the holiday instead of letting David make a fool of himself by behaving like a love-sick puppy . Roger Sloman appeared in one episode as David's old pal ' Kev Wilson ' , whom he had secretly envied for years . It turned out Kev envied him in return ! The first two seasons were good , but then they laboured the joke by making a third . It beggared belief that the same people could turn up at the same time in the same Spanish hotel to begin the saga all over again . A couple of episodes were extended plugs for ' Emmerdale Farm ' ( as it was then called ) and ' Wish You Were Here ' , also made by Y . T . V . Of the cast , Gwen Taylor was the stand out . I had only previously seen her in Eric Idle's ' Rutland Weekend Television ' so it came as a surprise to see her in sitcom ( I had forgotten ' Ripping Yarns ' ) . She was great as the wronged wife ( she played another four years later in ' A Bit Of A Do ' ) . I never understood why David wanted to ditch her for Linda . Amy was sexier by far . Keith Barron had done sitcom before , as Leslie Crowther's friend in ' My Good Woman ' . Joanna Van Gyseghem , who played ' Linda ' , first appeared in the crime drama ' Fraud Squad ' as ' Vicky Hicks ' . Neil Stacy was terrific as the pompous ' Robert ' , all blazer and blazing indignation , a kind of younger version of Arthur Lowe's ' Potter ' character . Carlos Douglas made an big impression as the waiter , often getting big laughs by saying nothing . Another outstanding attribute was Peter Knight's theme tune . One or two poor souls grumbled that it was not actually filmed on location in Spain . So what ? ' Red Dwarf ' was not filmed in outer space , yet was still funny ! ( The Christmas Special did have some location filming , but sadly due to prior commitments Gwen Taylor was only seen in interior shots ) . David Nobbs ' B . B . C . sitcom ' The Sun Trap ' was also set in Spain - and partly filmed there - yet turned out a stinker . So no classic but not as bad as Radcliffe and Kay would have you believe . Having just sat through two hours of the spectacularly awful ego-trip ' Britain's Got The Pop Factor etc . ' , I suggest the latter watches ' Duty Free ' closely to learn how to structure ( and more importantly pace ) comedy . |
401,432 | 7,743,887 | 58,018 | 8 | Harmless Slapstick From More Innocent Times | To me the films of Jerry Lewis are guilty cinematic pleasures up ( or should that be down ? ) there along with the ' Airport ' disaster movies , Britain's ' Confessions Of ' series , and the Dean Martin ' Matt Helm ' pictures . Whenever one aired on U . K . television in the ' 70's , it was like a Royal Wedding , ' Live Aid ' and ' Concert For Diana ' all rolled into one . There was no simply no way I was going to miss a Jerry Lewis movie . He basically played the same character over and over again - the gormless goof-ball , a child inhabiting a man's body , ' Forrest Gump ' meets ' Inspector Clouseau ' - and that's why we loved him . In ' The Disorderly Orderly ' , he is Jerome Littlefield , an accident-prone orderly at a private hospital . If anything can go wrong , when he's around it will . Ask him to fix a television set and he will break it beyond repair . Tell him to brush someone's teeth and he won't bother to check to see whether the patient actually has them in his mouth . If he smashes a bottle of pills , nurses will step on them and go flying like skittles . As one would expect from a Frank Tashlin film , its full of inventive sight gags , and Lewis performs them in his own wonderful , crazy way . The climax in which he chases a patient rolling down a steep hill on a gurney will have you goggling in disbelief even now . No C . G . I . in those days , folks ! Incredible stuff . Not so hot is the romantic subplot in which Lewis comes to the aid of would-be suicide patient Susan Oliver . Like Chaplin before him , Lewis combined comedy and pathos , but not so successfully . One of the great things about D . V . D . is that one can fast forward the soppy stuff to get to the really good bits ( of which there are many ) . We are far away from the ' 60's to have reached the point where movies such as this now represent nostalgia . Yet ' The Disorderly Orderly ' does not depict the world as it was , but as it should have been , a land where women wore Edith Head clothes , everything looked colourful and shiny , no-one swore or did terrible things and even idiots like Jerome got the girl at the end . Lewis had burned himself out by the late ' 60's , but when ablaze he was a comedy supernova . |
401,251 | 7,743,887 | 595,646 | 8 | You are not Uncle Bunny ! | The first episode of Tony Hancock's ill-fated A . T . V . series . A London department store has had a window broken , so an assistant is told to move out stock in case people try to make off with it . Hancock , passing by , is shocked to see what appears to be a woman undressing in full view of the public . Of course she is only removing an expensive garment from a mannequin . He goes to cover it with his jacket and , not realising there is no glass there , falls through . He takes the dummy into the shop and complains to the manager ( Patrick Cargill ) about the poor service . The manager challenges Tony to work there for one week without managing to lose his temper . . . Probably the single biggest mistake of Hancock's career was his decision to sack Ray Galton and Alan Simpson . Those men understood the character of ' Anthony Aloysius St . John Hancock ' better than anyone else , and this is evident from viewing ' The Assistant ' . It was written by Terry Nation ( creator of ' Blake's Seven ' , ' Survivors ' , and the ' Daleks ' from ' Dr . Who ' ) from a story by Rhy Whyberd ( better known as ventriloquist Ray Alan ) and , while not being particularly bad , could have been written for anybody . It is as though Hancock has wandered by mistake into Charlie Drake's ' The Worker ' . Though it has some genuine laughs , the major flaw is the ending - we never find out whether or not Hancock won his bet . Ray and Alan would not have made this mistake . At least he had the good sense to keep supporting actors of the calibre of Patrick Cargill , who was ' The Doctor ' in the classic ' The Blood Donor ' . Kenneth Griffith is very good as ' Owen Bowen ' , a fiery history-obsessed Welshman who Hancock encounters in the packing department . The annoying little girl whom Tony meets while dressed in a rabbit costume ( ' Uncle Bunny ' ) is Adrienne Poster , later to change the spelling of her surname to ' Posta ' and appear in films such as ' To Sir With Love ' and ' The Alf Garnett Saga ' . Funniest moment - the aforementioned brat denouncing Hancock's ' Uncle Bunny ' as an impostor , to which he replies : " Clear off before I fetch you one around the ears ! " . |
401,052 | 7,743,887 | 71,207 | 8 | Benny's Sketchbook ! | British cinemas in the ' 70's were full of features based on popular television sitcoms such as ' Bless This House ' , ' Please Sir ! ' , and , of course ' On The Buses ' . When Benny Hill was asked by Thames to make a movie , he opted for a compilation of his top-rated sketch show . He had probably been inspired by ' Ten From Your Show Of Shows ' which had been released the year before to great success . Unlike the Monty Python film ' And Now For Something Completely Different ' , ' The Best Of Benny Hill ' showcased the original television sketches , not a single item was remade for the big screen . These included ' Tribute To The Lower Tidmarsh Ambulance Brigade ' , ' Garden Of Love ' , ' The Short Life Of Maurice Dribble ' , ' The Messenger ' , and ' Wishing Well ' amongst others . Benny's old gang - Bob Todd and Jackie Wright - are in evidence , and the wonderful Patricia Hayes appears in several items . I saw this in the seaside resort of Tenby in South Wales and it perfectly rounded off an afternoon of fish and chips , crazy golf , sun and candy floss . Despite the fact that the material was directly taken from television , no-one felt cheated or left the theatre in a mood other than happy . My only complaint was that in the transference to the big screen , the picture quality had noticeably deteriorated , giving the movie a washed-out look . Fellow reviewer Theo Robertson wonders why the ' Sale Of The Half-Century ' sketch was not used . Benny had yet to come up with the idea . ' Hill's Angels ' were not formed until 1980 . The movie's success led to Thames making similar compilations for I . T . V . , these would be mainly be screened on Bank Holidays . Network has released all of Benny's early Thames work on D . V . D . now , so I could not really recommend purchasing this . Besides , the picture quality on ' The Annuals ' is far better . Funniest moment - ' Tuppertime ' , Benny's spoof on ' Dee Time ' ( a popular ' 60's B . B . C . chat show starring Simon Dee ) . Over the course of the sketch , Benny's ' Tommy Tupper ' struggles to interview a bored , pipe-smoking Henry McGee , the country's oldest man , an inebriated actress , and a vicar ( Michael Sharvell-Martin ) who has gone on air with his flies undone ! |
401,670 | 7,743,887 | 956,732 | 8 | I Was Wellington's Boot ! | Arriving at ' The Dolls ' House ' boutique , Duffy is horrified to see the supposedly gay Mr . Winters flirting with Sharon , as well as chasing her round the shop . Winters is only joking , but Eric feels genuinely insulted . Over a burger and chips at a café , they have a row , and he storms off . Sharon then gets friendly with a poor student named Chris , who has used the row as cover to steal chips from Sharon's plate . Chris takes Sharon to a museum and then to a stately home . They hit it off rather well . Chris is the complete opposite of Duffy , being intelligent and articulate . During walks in the park , he reads poetry to her . But Sharon makes a horrifying discovery : as part of his laboratory experiments Chris uses live rabbits . End of relationship . After a shaky first episode , ' Gang ' was really hitting its stride with some well-crafted story lines , including this one by Tony Bilbow . Its Sharon's show , with some nice if irrelevant contributions from Frankie and Craven . Sharon's date with Chris boasts some splendid location filming , although the choice of music is a bit unimaginative . Sharon's good-time girl of a mother is back , this time played by Barbara Keogh ( Diana Coupland was the original ' Connie Eversleigh ' ) . The character last appeared in the ' Please Sir ! ' episode ' The Decent Thing ' . Andria Lawrence is ' Sandra ' ( Sharon's new work colleague ) . Blonde , busty Ms . Lawrence seems to have been in every sitcom ever made in the ' 70's , most notably ' Doctor At Large ' and ' Doctor In Charge ' as the man-mad ' Nurse Willett ' . No mention is made of the fate of her predecessor , Yvonne Parker ( Carmen Munroe ) . Funniest moment - Frankie disguised as an old bearded man , a ruse so transparent I could see right to the back of my television screen ! |
400,848 | 7,743,887 | 956,728 | 8 | I'm a decorator ! | Having been sacked by the G . P . O . , Peter Craven is working alongside Duffy and Batch as an interior decorator . Their first job is to paint a block of flats , owned by Mr . Stringer , a man so miserable as to give Rigsby from ' Rising Damp ' a run for his money . Meanwhile , Dennis has left home , and when he cannot find accommodation Duffy suggests he spend a night in one of Stringer's unoccupied flats . That night , Stringer shows up with a pretty girl in tow , and finds Dennis there in his pyjamas . . . Okay episode , notable mainly for the appearance of the late Dudley Foster as ' Mr . Stringer ' . This talented actor ( who sadly committed suicide in 1973 ) appeared in numerous films and television series of the 60's / early ' 70's . ' Steptoe & Son ' fans will remember him as the detective in the episode ' Robbery With Violence ' . His wife is played by Fanny Carby , another sitcom regular , mostly cast as nosey housewives . Funniest moment - a pyjama-clad Dennis attempting to justify his presence in the flat to Mr . Stringer . Pretending to be a decorator , he grabs a paint brush and makes a horrendous red daub on the door . |
400,752 | 7,743,887 | 710,106 | 8 | Hello , Dotty ! | Harold has fallen asleep while waiting for his father to come home . An unusually well dressed Albert steps in out of the pouring rain , and reveals he has been to see a spiritualist called Madame Fontana . Harold laughs at his father's gullibility : " Its some old boiler doing a Mike Yarwood ! " . To prove it is all true , Harold agrees to a little experiment involving a Ouija board and a glass . But Harold decides to have a bit of fun by pretending that Hitler wishes to speak to the old man . Albert wants to stage a séance in the Steptoe house in the hope that it might enable him to contact his late wife . Albert has been getting friendly with a widow named Dorothy , and wants to ask for permission to remarry . . . Another ' Steptoe ' movie spoof , this time of Bryan Forbes ' 1964 film ' Seance On A Wet Afternoon ' which starred Richard Attenborough . Only the séance aspect of the plot is used , however . Patricia Routledge is ' Madame Fontana ' , a role she plays in much the same way as ' Audrey Watt ' , the white witch in the ' Doctor At Large ' episode ' Its All In The Mind ' from 1971 . Her vocal talents are put to good use here . She openly fancies Harold , causing him to refer to her as ' Fiona Richmond ' , named after the ' 70's porn star . Its an okay episode , but did not deserve to be the very last one of all , which it sadly was ( apart from that year's Christmas Special and another movie ) . The ' 70's revival of ' Steptoe & Son ' proved an unqualified success , but the time had arrived to bring it to a close . It is alarming to think that , had it never happened , ' Steptoe ' would most likely have been forgotten as black and white shows were rarely repeated after the introduction of colour . Funniest moment - Harold using the Ouija board to spell out the following message for his father ; ' You Are A Silly Turd ! ' |
401,193 | 7,743,887 | 77,069 | 8 | Simon In The ' 70's | When Ian Ogilvy was announced as the new ' Saint ' back in 1977 , I remember thinking : " Good casting . " . The series appeared the following year in a peak-time slot on Sunday evening and right away you could tell it wasn't going to work . The original ' Saint ' was still turning up on various I . T . V . regions in daytime slots , resulting in unfavourable comparisons . The character of Simon Templar seemed anachronistic at a time when ' The Sweeney ' and ' Starsky & Hutch ' ruled the roost . Ogilvy's trendy suits and the hideous saxophone / synthesiser music only made matters worse . Producer Anthony Spinner , a former contributor to ' The Man From U . N . C . L . E . ' and ' The Invaders ' amongst other shows , had the good sense to retain many of the original production team , such as writers John Kruse and Terrance Feely , directors Leslie Norman and Jeremy Summers . The expensive location filming gave the series a glossy sheen , but lost it the charm of the Elstree-bound Moore shows . Ogilvy could have made an excellent ' Saint ' had he been encouraged to develop his own personality and not simply impersonate Moore . He was also much too young for the role . ' T . V . Times ' readers disagreed , they voted him ' Most Compulsive Male Personality ' of 1979 . He was also the recipient of a ' This Is Your Life ' book that year , and walked into the Thames studio to great gales of applause . Loads of top totty for Simon to work his charm on , including Kate O'Mara , Prunella Gee , Judy Geeson , Mary Tamm , Catherine Schell , Tessa Wyatt , Carolyn Seymour , Lynn Dalby and Gayle Hunnicutt . It was the last of its kind - the glossy , globe-trotting I . T . C . adventure series , a line that can be traced back to 1959 and the half-hour version of ' Danger Man ' . Lew Grade switched to feature film production ( with middling results ) and no more ' Saints ' were made . Despite my not liking the show at the time , its stock has increased over the years , mainly because the Simon Dutton and Val Kilmer versions were worse ! Best episode - ' The Armaggeddon Alternative ' . Worst episode - ' Death In Venice ' . Parodied by L . W . T . ' s ' End Of Part One ' as ' Return Of The Doughnut ' . |
401,655 | 7,743,887 | 77,061 | 8 | I go see proper doctor for the eyes . I go see chiropodist ! | Rob Buckman and Chris Beetles were doctors who switched to writing radio comedy , progressing into television with episodes of the final run of ' Doctor On The Go ' , then landing their own sketch show , created by , written and starring themselves . Made by London Weekend Television , ' The Pink Medicine Show ' owed a great debt to ' Monty Python's Flying Circus ' . The medically-themed sketches were linked by similar surreal devices ; for instance , a picture on an office wall suddenly turning into the opening shot of the next sketch . As a comedy team , Buckman and Beetles were a sort of ' Smith & Jones ' with stethoscopes . They were assisted by future ' Robin Of Sherwood ' star Nickolas Grace and Peter John , with sexy Lynda Bellingham as the show's equivalent of Carol Cleveland . In the first episode , the aftermath of a heart transplant operation was depicted as akin to that of a soccer match , with doctors and nurses laughing and splashing about in the showers ( viewers were treated to a lovely naked back shot of Bellingham ) . Highlights included the ' Starsky & Hutch'-style paramedics ' Fasolt & Fafner ' , an exploding bed-pan , a commercial for Nodrogs syrup of figs ( shot in the style of a 1960's Martini ad ) , ' The Maurice Chevalier School Of Surgery ' , how Rudyard Kipling's poetry was affected by having his tonsils out , a music hall number called ' The Night They Invented Penicillin ' , and ' Signor Robino Goes To The Doctors ' in which a politically incorrect foreigner ( Buckman ) causes havoc when he visits his G . P . Somewhat less successful were Buckman's monologues to camera . The show either tickled your funny bone or had you writhing in agony . I liked it ! It was unusually rude for a comedy that went out at 7 . 30 P . M . on a Friday night - which endeared it to us filthy-minded kids ! EXAMPLE : Doctor Beetles responds to an emergency . He finds his patient , Buckman , sitting up in bed . BEETLES : What's the matter ? BUCKMAN : I empty my bowels every morning at eight . BEETLES : So what's the problem ? BUCKMAN : I don't get up until nine ! |
401,564 | 7,743,887 | 67,528 | 8 | And you can get it ' On The Buses ' , upstairs or down inside . . . | Those who regard the ' 70's as ' the decade that taste forgot ' cite the success of ' On The Buses ' in spurious defence of their views . " It was the most popular film of 1971 ! " , they rage , " Everyone in Britain then must have been stupid ! " . Er , no . It came out at a bad time for British cinema . Big American studios had withdrawn funding for productions , hence something drastic needed to be done to keep cinemas open . The success of the ' Till Death Us Do Part ' movie in 1969 provided an answer ; make feature-length versions of hit television sitcoms . The bigger the sitcom the more popular the film was likely to be . In 1971 , you could not find one more popular than ' On The Buses ' , then three years old . It made sound economic sense for a studio - in this case , Hammer Films - to buy the screen rights . Nobody could have predicted just how successful it would turn out to be , overtaking ' Love Story ' as that year's biggest picture in the U . K . Yes , it out grossed ' Diamonds Are Forever ' too , but the latter only opened in December , while ' O . T . B ' was on release in July , so oft-repeated comparisons between the box office performances of these films are grossly unfair . One possible explanation for the film's extraordinary success may have been that it afforded many ' O . T . B . ' fans , the ones who hadn't upgraded to colour television , with their first glimpse of their favourite show in anything other than monochrome . Also , in the seaside towns and holiday camps it may have provided a respite for sodden tourists keen to escape from the occasionally appalling British weather ( which is how I came to see it ) . With that year's ' Carry On ' ( ' Carry On At Your Convienience ' ) proving a flop , ' On The Buses ' was well placed to take advantage of audiences feeling let down by the latest outing of Sid , Hattie and co . The main part of the plot ( the Luxton bus company getting up the noses of its staff by hiring women drivers ) could have formed the basis of a typical episode , but the writers were able to broaden ( some would say , coarsen ) the humour , which is why we get clippies taking their clothes off , slapstick ( Blakey getting drenched as Stan's bus goes though a puddle ) and jokes about incontinence . However , a subplot concerning Olive's pregnancy distanced the film from its television counterpart , as Arthur and Olive were childless in the series . One thing common to nearly all these films ( apart from ' Please Sir ! ' , ' Steptoe & Son ' , and ' Dad's Army ' ) was the absence of the original theme music ; here we get a dreary pub singalong ( credited to ' Quince Harmon ' ) entitled ' Its A Great Life On The Buses ' . I can understand why some ' O . T . B ' fans loathe the movies , but they should bear this in mind - for many years , this - and indeed the other two films - were the only ' On The Buses ' to be found on British television . Whatever their perceived shortcomings , they at least kept the flag flying for the crazy world of Stan , Blakey and co . Otherwise it might have been totally forgotten . |
400,668 | 7,743,887 | 828,938 | 8 | Want a bit of cake ? | Stan is engaged to Sally , a clippie who happens to be Blakey's niece . The inspector isn't too happy about the situation . Inviting her home for tea , Stan tries to create a good impression by wearing the kipper tie Sally has bought him - but it makes him look like a twerp . Sally aggravates Mrs . Butler by continually correcting Stan's speech patterns . and criticising the food . A row blows up across the kitchen table , with Stan , Mrs . Butler and Arthur on one side , and Blakey and Sally on the other . She calls off the engagement . A reworking of ' The Inspector's Niece ' . Madelaine Mills would reappear in the ' Vacancy For Inspector ' episode , as ' Christine ' . Arthur reveals that he and Olive have been married for nine years . Instead of taking a neutral stand in the family argument , as one might expect , he pitches in . Blakey shows Stan a photo of his twin sister , also played by Stephen Lewis . She would feature in the spin-off ' Don't Drink The Water ' , played then by Pat Coombs . Funniest moment - Stan's ' with it ' hairstyle which makes him look like one of The Beatles ! |
401,528 | 7,743,887 | 967,888 | 8 | Exit Mike Upchat , Enter . . . Er . . . Mike Upchat ? | Broadcast in 1977 , ' The Upchat Line ' was a witty and sophisticated Thames sitcom which starred the King Midas of ' 70's telly - John Alderton - as an incorrigible liar with a way with the ladies . It proved a hit with viewers , and a second series was commissioned . But a public falling out between the actor and writer Keith Waterhouse meant that it needed a new star . Replacing Alderton would not be easy , as the producers of ' Please Sir ! ' found to their cost seven years earlier . Enter Robin Nedwell , fresh from L . W . T . ' s long running ' Doctor ' series in which the role of ' Duncan Waring ' had required him to ' pull birds ' ( or rather , nurses ) and lie like no tomorrow . Ideal qualifications . More importantly , Nedwell had also proved he could successfully replace a sitcom's leading man - he had done as much in 1972 when Barry Evans packed his medical bag and left St . Swithins for good . Interviewed at the time , Nedwell glibly said : " I have been chatted to about doing Upchat ! " . The show was retitled ( a mistake in my view ) ' The Upchat Connection ' . The first episode opens at Marylebone Station . A man ( Nedwell ) waves goodbye to another as he gets aboard a train . Presumably the departed is the original Mike Upchat ( we do not see his face close up ) . As the train pulls out , the first man grins mischievously as he holds up a luggage locker key . Inside are all of Mike's possessions , including a declaration that the owner of the key is the new Mike Upchat . So rather than put Nedwell into the show and pretend as though nothing has changed , Waterhouse chose instead to make a big issue of it . The new Mike gets a lift in a van to Polly's Club . This is the first time we have seen the sassy landlady ( Bernadette Milnes - mother of Lystette Anthony , incidentally ) since the first episode of ' Line ' . When he introduces himself as Mike Upchat , she does not believe him . But then she did not believe anything the original said either . To test him , she gives him Mike's ' usual ' - a vile looking drink in a tall glass - and after taking a swallow , he almost chokes . He explains that the original Mike has gone to California ( though he told others he was going to Australia ) , presumably for good . On his last night in London , he raffled all his worldly goods - an address book containing his pseudonyms , his luggage locker key , a blind date with the stunning ' Suzie ' , and even the name ' Mike Upchat ' . Maggie ( Susan Jameson ) , one of the old Mike's ' friends ' , arrives , and also thinks the new one an impostor ( well he is , isn't he ? ) . But she is sufficiently intrigued to insist he take her to lunch at Mario's restaurant . So now Mike has two dinner dates arranged simultaneously , one with the lovely Maggie , the other with the equally lovely Suzie . Rather than let either down , Mike chooses instead to dash back and forth between restaurants ( luckily they are within walking distance of each other ) , gobbling down mouthfuls of food and wine while engaging in meaningless small talk . To excuse himself , he comes up with outrageous lies like " I need to make an urgent phone-call to Wales ! " . The girls eventually work out what he is up to and leave him alone . Returning to Polly's , he strikes up an instant friendship with another stunning beauty . . . As ' Upchat ' , Nedwell is more than adequate an replacement for Alderton . The script takes into account this is not the same man by making him less of a smooth-talker and more a fumbling amateur . The problem is that the ghost of ' Duncan Waring ' has not been ( and sadly never would be ) sufficiently exorcised . Nedwell also badly missed a performer of the calibre of Geoffrey Davies to bounce his humour off . Waterhouse shot himself in the foot by reworking his opening episode of ' Billy Liar ' ( 1973 ) in putting his hero on multiple dates . ' Maggie ' is Susan Jameson , who guested in the ' Line ' episode ' Casualty Ward ' as ' Susan ' the nurse . She appeared in every edition of ' Connection ' . Karin MacCarthy , who plays ' Suzie ' , was married to actor Alun Armstrong at the time and would have been familiar to viewers through her role as Bernard Hepton's sexy secretary ' Carol ' in Eric Chappell's delightful ' The Squirrels ' . Funniest moment - the look on Mike's face when Polly presents him with a giant plate of spaghetti bolognese . Not the sort of thing you want to eat after two dinners ! |
401,519 | 7,743,887 | 71,014 | 8 | Permission To Change Channels , Sir ! | ' My Old Man ' was an edition of ' Seven Of One ' , shown on BBC-2 on / 73 . Ronnie Barker starred as former engine driver ' Sam Cobbett ' , a cantankerous old codger turfed out of his house in Ironmonger Row by the council , and who moves in with his daughter Doris ( Ann Beach ) and her grumpy husband Arthur ( the late Larry Martyn ) in their high-rise flat . Arthur sees Sam's presence as an unwelcome intrusion and does not get on with him at all . The humour largely arose from Sam's efforts to adjust to his new surroundings . For instance , he calls in at the local pub and is appalled to find that the barman Cyril ( Robin Parkinson ) is outrageously gay . But he bumps into an old friend in the shape of Willie ( Leslie Dwyer ) and they have a good old Cockney sing-song . Like the later ' Victor Meldrew ' , given half a chance Sam could still misbehave . It was not actually bad , it was merely that the other shows were superior . ' Prisoner & Escort ' and ' Open All Hours ' both led to series . When ' My Old Man ' was not picked up , writer Gerald Frow took the idea to I . T . V's Yorkshire Television . Ronnie Barker was under contract to the B . B . C . , so with ' Dad's Army ' still in production at that time , I . T . V . turned it into a star vehicle for Clive Dunn . They were keen to cash in on the success of Jimmy Perry and David Croft's sitcom , and had earlier lured over James Beck to make ' Romany Jones ' . Dunn chose to play ' Sam ' in much the same manner as ' Jonesy ' , as a lovable bumbling old fool , but with a flat cap and a woollen scarf replacing a uniform . Taking the place of Larry Martyn as ' Arthur ' was Edward Hardwicke , one of the stars of the first season of B . B . C . ' s ' Colditz ' ( he played ' Major Pat Grant ' ) . Priscilla Morgan , Dunn's real-life wife , took over Ann Beach's role as his daughter ! A young Keith Chegwin played Sam's grandson ' Ron ' . The first episode of ' My Old Man ' was a virtual remake of the ' Seven Of One ' original . Dunn sang the theme song whose lyrics went something like : " My old man , with his brolly unfurled , his sandwiches curled , he's off to change the world , my old man . ' . Critics grumbled at the change-over , and tried to compare the ways that Ronnie and Clive tackled the role . A few noticed a similarity in the basic premise to that of ' Spring & Autumn ' , a Vince Powell sitcom starring Jimmy Jewel which had debuted the year before . I personally was reminded of Dick Emery's ' Lampwick ' sketches . But it was sufficiently popular to run to two seasons . |
401,287 | 7,743,887 | 275,830 | 8 | Dawson's Half-Hour ? | Imagine , if you will , that Tony Hancock had not died in 1968 . Furthermore , that he had re-teamed in 1975 with Ray Galton and Alan Simpson , and Kenneth Williams to make a new series of ' Hancock's Half-Hour ' for Yorkshire Television . If you can imagine all that , you should then have a rough idea of what ' Dawson's Weekly ' was like . Comedian Les Dawson had shot to stardom on ' Opportunity Knocks ! ' following years of doing stand-up in British clubs - often to unresponsive audiences - and landed his own show on I . T . V . - ' Sez Les ' . Galton and Simpson had noted the uncanny similarity between Dawson's comic persona , that of a right old misery guts , and the late Hancock , and thought it would be interesting to put him in a ' Hancock ' type show . The starting point was ' Holiday With Strings ' , a one-off special screened on / 74 . In it , Les played a would-be traveller wishing to see the world for £22 . He books a package holiday to Tossa del Mar with a cheap tour company . He gets an idea what sort of holiday this will be when the air hostess ( the great Patricia Hayes , a one-time Hancock regular ) sells raffle tickets to see who is going to have lunch on the plane . Les strikes up a friendship with Peregrine ( Roy Barraclough ) a gay coal-miner . Things get worse as passengers are made to hand over loose change to pay for an unexpected refuelling . It is not hard to imagine Hancock saying Les ' lines . In addition to Barraclough and Hayes , Dawson had good support from the likes of Mollie Sugden and Frank Thornton . It worked well , and ' Dawson's Weekly ' appeared the following year . Roy Barraclough returned , though as ' Roy ' , and he filled the Kenneth Williams role as an irritating little man who crops up every week . Instead of a Homburg hat and Astrakhan collar , Dawson wore a Hell's Angels type leather outfit - ' Darby & Joan Club , Leeds ' written on the back of the jacket , complete with long white scarf . Seven episodes were made . In ' Les Miserables ' , Les is so depressed that he goes to a psychiatrist . ' Where There's A Will ' has him trying to get married within seven days in order to qualify for an inheritance . In ' Stage Struck ' , Les's Hancockian pretensions lead him to try his hand at acting . The show ended with ' Strangers In The Night ' , set aboard a British Rail sleeper train to Scotland . Les meets an attractive woman ( Sue Lloyd ) and sneaks into her cabin for some naughty business . The next morning , however , he makes a horrifying discovery - he went to the wrong cabin and had sex with an old woman by mistake . Panicking , Les calls for an ambulance . Critics were less than impressed , however , branding it ' crude ' and ' rude ' ( funny how the definition of crudity has changed since 1975 ! ) and , at least one said the show should be renamed ' Dawson's Weakly ' . While it is not as good as the Hancock shows ( mainly down to Les looking uncomfortable in sitcom ) , it is very funny and worth a major reevaluation . Les returned to sketch shows and eventually replaced Terry Wogan as the host of the B . B . C . ' s ' Blankety Blank ' . The episodes ' Where There's A Will ' and ' The Clerical Error ' were remade twenty years later starring Paul Merton . |
401,194 | 7,743,887 | 71,033 | 8 | When The World Went Ape ! | ' Battle For The Planet Of The Apes ' in 1973 was the last in the series of motion pictures inspired by Pierre Boulle's novel ' Monkey Planet ' . Arthur P . Jacobs , the producer , had been planning a spin-off show for some time , but his sad death that year meant the idea had to be bequeathed to others . The series begins much in the same manner as the first movie . A spacecraft containing three American astronauts - only Alan Virdon ( Ron Harper ) and Pete Burke ( James Naughton ) survive - has crash landed on Earth in the far future . Apes have taken over and Man has been reduced to a slave workforce . Dr . Zaius ( Booth Colman ) fears the humans are a threat to Ape civilisation and wants them dead . A curious chimpanzee named Galen ( Roddy McDowall ) assists the astronauts to escape the clutches of vicious General Urko and his gorilla army , but in doing so inadvertently causes a death and so has to go on the run with them . ' Apes ' had little of the meaningful social commentary of the movies , playing more like David Janssen's ' The Fugitive ' . Each week , our heroes arrived in a different community , got involved in a local difficulty , solved it , and moved on , all the time struggling to stay one step ahead of Urko ( ' The Incredible Hulk ' series with Bill Bixby also utilised this format ) . This show was my introduction to the ' Planet Of The Apes ' universe . None of the movies had been seen on British television prior to the series . I . T . V . gave it a network showing on Sunday evenings , something the British-made ' Space : 1999 ' was not able to achieve . The performances were good , with Roddy McDowall's lovable ' Galen ' capturing the hearts of millions . Like a good little boy , I dutifully bought the bubblegum cards , the Marvel Comics weekly , and proudly wore a ' Planet Of The Apes ' T-shirt around town . You couldn't escape from the Apes in 1974 . The show boasted a classic title sequence in which the premise was ingeniously spelt out in a few seconds . Imagine my horror when I learnt that it had been cancelled after only fourteen episodes ! How did it end , I wondered , did Virdon and Burke ever get back to their own time ? Had the show depended on British ratings for its survival , it would have lasted years . Only when I saw the movies years later did I realise how inferior the series was by comparison . Still , it occupies a special place in my heart . Compared to the Tim Burton fiasco , it is a towering work of genius ! |
401,404 | 7,743,887 | 591,051 | 8 | Strictly Goodies Dancing ! | When The Penelope Fay Dancing Team are doped just prior to the finals of the B . B . C . ' s ' Come Dancing ' , Miss Fay asks the Goodies to replace them . There's a snag - they can't dance . Graeme rigs up some special ' dancing suits ' - suits that dance by remote control . The Goodies soon pull level with Miss Fay's rival - the unscrupulous Delia Capone - but she isn't about to let the Goodies waltz off with the trophy and prize money . She challenges them to an open-air duel . . . The original ' Come Dancing ' was a very different show to the one currently on air . No Z-list celebrities , no pompous judges , no booing audiences ; instead they had formation dancing teams pitted against one another , lots of elegance and charm . Its that which this episode sends up . June Whitfield is surprisingly sexy as ' Penelope Fay ' ( must be those false eyelashes and wig ) , while Joan Sims comes on strong as the gangster-like ' Delia Capone ' . With his dark brilliantine hair , Tim Brooke-Taylor looks uncannily like Conservative leader David Cameron ! Funniest moment - Tim and Bill learning to dance courtesy of a instructional record by Lionel Bleagghh ! |
401,349 | 7,743,887 | 591,046 | 8 | Where It All Began | Using money left to him by his late Aunt , Tim Brooke-Taylor sets up an agency comprised of himself , his friends Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie , whose motto is ' we do anything , anytime ' . They are summoned to the Tower Of London , where a dreadful crisis has occurred . In the words of the Chief Beefeater : " someone is stealing the Beefeaters ' beef . " . The Beefeaters are forced to eat corned beef , and as a consequence are wasting away . The Goodies investigate , and discover that the culprit has blue blood . . . ' The Goodies ' first episode is a patchy affair ; the beginning is the best , where Graeme shows the others round the office . " In there is a year's supply of food . " , he says , opening a door , to reveal a large photograph of a supermarket aisle . In the same way ' The Avengers ' presented an exaggerated version of ' 60's Britain , ' The Goodies ' depicted an over-the-top ' 70's , in which girls wore short skirts and the men kipper ties , Hai Karate after-shave and and flowery shirts . Unfortunately , some young people now think the show is an accurate commentary on that era . The main plot about the Crown Jewels is a little dull , but enlivened by an amusing sequence in a torture chamber which has been converted into a kitchen . To cut the corned beef sandwiches , the Chief Beefeater uses a giant pendulous blade straight out of Edgar Allan Poe . Tim's line " Its beef ! Its beef ! " is a reference to a then-current television commercial for Knorr beef cubes starring Bob Todd . George Baker is best known for his role as ' Inspector Wexford ' , but he has done comedy too . He played the title role in ' Bowler ' , a spin-off from I . T . V . ' s ' The Fenn Street Gang ' . Not a bad opener , but the best was yet to come . Funniest moment - the mock advertisement for ' Fairy Puff ' washing powder ! |
401,078 | 7,743,887 | 209,789 | 8 | The Mad Scientist Show ! | What did I . T . V . used to show in the bad old days before it became obsessed with soap ? The answer - sitcoms , U . S . imports , nature documentaries of the ' Survival ' variety , and shows such as ' Don't Ask Me ' . It was science for the masses ( some would say ' dumbed down ' science , and it probably was ) , but done with a knowing wink . Three resident boffins - David Bellamy , Magnus Pyke and Miriam Stoppard - took it in turn to answer viewers ' questions . These ranged from ' why does water taste minty after you've been sucking Polo mints for a couple of hours ? ' to ' how did the salt get in the sea ? ' and ' how do birds know when to migrate ' ? ' . It was ' How ! ' for adults . The first show drew complaints after Stoppard was seen hurling babies into a pool , apparently to prove they had a natural ability to swim . No-one drowned , but even so , it was a disturbing sight to behold . A couple of the toddlers looked really terrified . The show probably would have been cancelled after one season were it not for one magic ingredient - the boffins themselves . Bellamy's mangling of the English language made him a boon to impressionists such as Lenry Henry and Stanley Baxter ; Pyke dressed like William Hartnell's ' Dr . Who ' and couldn't say two words without turning into a human windmill ; Stoppard simply looked gorgeous . The original presenter was actor Derek Griffiths . His successors included actor Brian Clover and future Labour M . P . for Grimsby Austin Mitchell . Allegedly Adrienne Posta auditioned for the job , only to be rejected on the grounds she was too young and trendy ! What could have been a stuffy old science lecture peopled by boring old fogeys in cravats instead became a masterclass in English eccentricity . Every boffin had his / her fans . Mine was Pyke . ' Don't Ask Me ' made him an overnight star , leading to appearances on ' Celebrity Squares ' and ' Parkinson ' etc . I doubt whether anyone became a scientist as a result of watching ' Don't Ask Me ' , but it was a lot more fun than what's in that Wednesday 7 P . M . slot nowadays . And if it got kids asking questions such as ' what is the Ozone layer for ? ' then so much the better . |
401,372 | 7,743,887 | 591,040 | 8 | Monsters don't exist ! | The Goodies save a man who is about to throw himself off a bridge . He is the keeper of the Monster House at the London Zoo , and is depressed because he doesn't have a monster to exhibit . So the Goodies set off for Scotland to capture the Loch Ness Monster . . . An enjoyably daft start to the second season . Scotland as seen here is a land of tartan kilts , bagpipe spiders , Andy Stewart , haggis hunting , road signs that say ' Och Aye The Noo ' and sporrans that drink milk and make mewling noises . In other words , one that has only existed in the fevered imaginations of comedy writers . ( Wales would come in for a similar ribbing in Season Five ) . Stanley Baxter was under contract to the B . B . C . when he made this , but his performance is so close to John Laurie's you wonder why they didn't hire the real one . ' Carry On ' star Bernard Bresslaw appears as the zoo keeper . Funniest moment - the Goodies towing the Loch Ness Monster back to London ! |
401,408 | 7,743,887 | 70,986 | 8 | I ' ate you , Senor ! | My memories of this show are hazy to say the least . I recall that the ' T . V . Times ' did a special feature to tie-in with the opening episode . Written in the form of diary extracts , it told of the events leading up to the first transmitted episode - how Inspector Cyril Blake retired from the Luxton bus company after years of loyal service and moved to Spain with his sister Dorothy ( " Who's driving this plane ? Stan Butler ? " ) . We knew Blakey had a sister because in the ' On The Buses ' episode ' Going Steady ' he shows Stan a photo . Stephen Lewis put on drag to play Dorothy , but for ' Don't Drink The Water ' , it was ( rightly ) decided to hire an actress to play the role . The wonderful , much-missed Pat Coombs was then appearing regularly as a foil for Dick Emery . Lewis and Coombs made a formidable comedy team , much as Lewis and Varney had been . Rather like ' Duty Free ' nearly a decade later , ' Water ' was shot entirely in the studio , with travelogue footage spliced in . It made no difference . Audiences did not demand authenticity in their comedy in those days . It did well enough to secure a second season , but the ghost of ' On The Buses ' proved hard to exorcise . Rather like ' Going Straight ' , ' The Fenn Street Gang ' and most recently , ' The Green , Green Grass ' , ' Water ' was deemed inferior to the original , its merits ignored . It was an uphill struggle for Ronald Wolfe and Ronald Chesney to recapture the success of ' Buses ' . Eventually , they gave up and moved on to , surprisingly , another spin-off - the awful ' Yus , My Dear ' starring Arthur Mullard . The first episode of ' Water ' has been made available as an extra on the ' On The Buses ' season 7 D . V . D . and makes enjoyable viewing , if you like ' fish out of water ' comedies . Interestingly , six years later , ' Reggie Perrin ' creator David Nobbs wrote a similar series for the B . B . C . - the appalling ' Sun Trap ' - which despite being shot in Spain , was far less amusing than ' Water ' . |
400,653 | 7,743,887 | 344,034 | 8 | Fun In The Sun With Marty | Picture the scene : Marty is on a holiday flight to Spain . Wearing sunglasses and with a white towel over his head , he thinks he looks cool . On his way to the john , he picks up a toy sub-machine gun a kid has dropped . Before he can return it the plane hits an air pocket and Marty is propelled into the cockpit , where the crew take him for a would-be hijacker ! Later , our hero arrives in Spain to find the hotel he is booked into is not finished . Off he goes to a beach when he gets an unusual request from a topless British sunbather . A dog has made off with her bra so , ever the gallant rescuer , Marty agrees to ride a tandem back to the hotel with him seated behind her , holding sombreros over her breasts ! All goes well until he spots an old friend and absent-mindedly doffs one of the hats ! This one-off silent comedy , shot on location , featured Marty Feldman doing what he was best at - visual comedy . His favourite support comedian John Junkin was at hand , cast as a smarmy hotel manager . It was one of Marty's last television projects ; not long afterwards , he succumbed to the lure of Hollywood . |
401,318 | 7,743,887 | 803,374 | 8 | Mr . Hedges is a sexual pervert ! | Having failed to interest 5C in art , Hedges attempts to teach them Shakespeare , beginning with ' Romeo & Juliet ' . Frankie would rather they read Mickey Spillane instead . One person keen to act out the love scenes in the play with her teacher is Maureen Bullock , who is hopelessly infatuated with him . After refereeing a football match , Hedges is helped by 5C - along with Duffy's Dad - to settle into his new flat . But a nosey neighbour spots a smiling Maureen leaving with Hedges - and jumps to the wrong conclusions . The gossip spreads like wildfire , and when it reaches Potter's ears , he goes to tell Mr . Cromwell . . . With this episode , the characters were fully defined . Maureen's habit of bursting into tears led to a running gag in which Hedges always handed out hankies ( there was a great pay-off to it at the end of Season 3 ) . Potter complements the headmaster on making a witty remark when all he did quote a proverb , and Frankie's fascination with the criminal underworld makes itself known . Alistair Williamson plays ' Mr . Duffy ' , and would still be in the role when ' The Fenn Street Gang ' got underway three years later . Funniest moment - Dennis interrupting the Romeo & Juliet reenactments with ( bad ) imitations of nocturnal animals . |
401,011 | 7,743,887 | 590,994 | 8 | Well , I'll Be Hornswoggled ! | The Goodies are asked by Major Cheeseberger of the U . S . Army to dispose of a large drum of tomato soup . After trying ( and failing ) in this task , they decide the simplest way to get rid of it is to eat the stuff . It looks like no tomato soup they've seen before - its green , for one thing , and tastes foul . They sell the rest to a motorway service station who try and pass it off as not only soup , but also coffee and petrol . But the ' soup ' is really Virus C . V . 70 , which has the unfortunate effect of changing people into . . . clowns . The Goodies have become the victims of a sinister plot by The Pentagon to turn Britain into the 52nd state , so that the country can be written off as a tax loss . As marines land on the beaches , rifles at the ready , only the Goodies stand between us and domination by Uncle Sam . . . Owing a debt to the first season episodes ' Snooze ' and ' The Greenies ' , this episode provides the Goodies with a perfect excuse to do a lot of slapstick gags ( not that they needed one ! ) whilst dressed as clowns . The U . S . Army gets bashed here ; the road to their base is guarded by a sign that reads : ' No Commies ' , they have bombs whose smoke when inhaled induces clapping , and Major Cheeseburger has tape recorders stashed around his office ( including a portrait of Jane Fonda in her ' Barbarella ' guise ) . Assuring the Goodies he is not taping their meeting , Cheeseburger presses a button and the ashtrays on his desk start to revolve , just like spools on a tape deck . John Bluthal , who plays ' Cheeseburger ' , is a dead ringer for the current U . S . President George W . Bush . And not just in looks either . Australian comedy actor Bluthal is best known these days for his role in ' The Vicar Of Dibley ' . The late Peter Dyneley , seen briefly as a Pentagon General , is remembered as the voice of ' Jeff Tracy ' from Gerry Anderson's ' Thunderbirds ' . Funniest moment - the clown virus getting of control , and infecting motorists , old men on bikes , the Queen and the members of the Houses Of Parliament ( so no change there ! ) . |
400,861 | 7,743,887 | 590,995 | 8 | Art For Art's Sake | The Goodies attend an auction at Sothebys . Patriotic Tim is horrified to see a gang of rich Americans eyeing up a priceless Valesquez . Determined that the painting should stay on British soil , he joins in the bidding , which eventually escalates to ludicrous proportions . Having successfully bought the painting , the Goodies attempt to sell it to The Minister For The Arts . He accepts it reluctantly for the nation after first promising Tim not to increase gallery entrance fees and to pay the Goodies if the Government gets an unexpected windfall . Posing as cleaners , the Goodies steal the National Gallery's art treasures in the hope the insurance money will enable the Government to pay for the painting . . . One of the weaker Season 2 episodes , there is still a fair amount of fun to be had here , particularly when Tim bids astronomical sums of money ( which he does not have ) for a priceless work of art . The Americans wear out-sized stetsons , and clichéd cowboy music accompanies them wherever they go . As a prediction of the twenty-first century vogue for ' dumbing down ' the arts , this works pretty well . Julian Orchard plays the latest in a long line of pompous ' Ministers ' to feature in Season 2 . The long-faced actor ( who died in 1979 ) appeared in ' Carry On Doctor ' amongst other things , and was also famous for being able to using a saw as a musical instrument . Tommy Godfrey , a regular in Vince Powell sitcoms such as ' Love Thy Neighbour ' , appears as ' The Auctioneer ' . Funniest moment - the National Gallery turned into a fairground , full of such startling attractions as ' Pin The Ear On Van Gogh ' and ' Knock The Arms Off Venus ( De Milo ) . The sequence has animation which would not have looked out of place in ' Monty Python's Flying Circus ' . |
401,225 | 7,743,887 | 706,313 | 8 | The Alien With the Child In His Eyes ! | ' Alpha Child ' opens with one of the most shocking scenes ( well , it was back in 1975 ) ever broadcast on television . Cynthia Crawford ( Cyd Hayman ) gives birth , the first child ever born on Moonbase Alpha . The Alphans are naturally thrilled . Then she starts screaming . In mere seconds , the newly-born baby has suddenly matured into a five-year old boy . What is going on here ? Tests prove the boy is physically normal , other than being a deaf mute . He becomes the darling of the base , but Commander Koenig is concerned . Just how normal is little Jackie Crawford ? Alien ships appear from nowhere and put Carter's Eagle out of action . Jackie undergoes a further growth stage , becoming ' Jarak ' , the leader of a race of beings fleeing from some unknown adversary . Killing Cynthia , Jarak reincarnates her as ' Rena ' , his wife . He wishes his people to take over the bodies of all on Alpha . . . This was by Christopher Penfold who , along with Johnny Byrne , was the best writer on the first series of ' Space : 1999 ' . Like I said earlier , it opens with a startling teaser , gets a bit syrupy thereafter with the likes of Alan Carter giving the mute boy piggyback rides around Main Mission . Things get moving again when Jackie evolves into Jarak , the latter played by the superb Julian Glover , a man who could play villains in his sleep . The sight of Jarak kissing Rena has slight Oediepal connotations , after all , the woman is supposed to be his mother ( or rather , her body was ) . Exactly why Jarak and his people are being pursued is not revealed . The lovely Cyd Hayman does not get to do much , her role as ' Madame Cocotte ' in ' The Two Ronnies ' serial ' Death Can Be Fatal ' gave her more lines ! When Cynthia becomes Rena , she not only acquires a new personality but also a new hair-do with matching lip-gloss ! Still , I like this . Its better than the rubbish Mr . Freiberger foisted on us in Year 2 . Even so , I wish more had been made of the ' evil child ' situation . This could have been ' Space : 1999''s answer to ' The Omen ' ! |
401,418 | 7,743,887 | 63,534 | 8 | I Saw This Movie Once . . . | Surely this was one of Mike Myers ' favourite movies from his childhood ? ' Salt & Pepper ' was produced by its stars Sammy Davis Jr . and Peter Lawford . ' Charles Salt ' and ' Christopher Pepper ' are owners of a seedy Soho nightclub who get into trouble when a beautiful Chinese agent dies in Salt's dressing room . Then , one by one , V . I . P . ' s start dropping like flies . Despite continual interference from the law , Salt and Pepper manage to uncover a diabolical plot by extremists to take over the country using a stolen nuclear submarine , H . M . S . Hercules . Its like watching a ' Matt Helm ' picture without Dino . The opening scenes are atrocious , but as soon as Salt and Pepper are kidnapped by fake policeman , it perks up . Some of the action is surprisingly violent for a lightweight comedy , particularly the finale in a military academy in which an M . P . dies when Pepper removes the pin from one of the grenades hanging from his belt . The excellent British cast are a big help - Michael Bates as the incompetent ' Inspector Crabbe ' , Ernest Clark as ' Colonel Balsam ' , and John LeMesurier as the eye patch-wearing villain ' Colonel Woodstock ' . Johnny Dankworth's swinging music catches the mood of the film perfectly . Michael Pertwee went on to write for ' The Persuaders ! ' starring Tony Curtis and Roger Moore . Financially successful though the film was , it didn't lead to Sammy and Peter becoming ' the new Hope & Crosby ' . A sequel , ' One More Time ' ( directed by Jerry Lewis ) was an unmitigated disaster . Richard Donner went on to make ' The Omen ' , ' Superman ' and ' Lethal Weapon ' . |
401,221 | 7,743,887 | 706,314 | 8 | The Woman With Two Brains | A mysterious phenomenon ( what ' Red Dwarf ' would term a ' swirly-thing alert ' ! ) engulfs the Moon , splitting it into two . Personnel are duplicated , with the exception of Regina Kesslann ( Judy Geeson ) who babbles incessantly about Alan and Koenig being dead , and talks as though she is back on Earth . Shocked at seeing Alan ( a man she hardly knows but believes she was married to ) in Main Mission , she drops dead . An X-ray reveals the presence in her skull of two ( count ' em ) brains ! As if that was not bizarre enough , the Moon has returned to its point of origin - our Solar System . In its absence the Earth has become uninhabitable , except for an area called Santa Maria . Another Moon is in the sky . Koenig and Alan find the other Alpha deserted , and the remains of a crashed Eagle containing the corpses of their duplicates . . . In 1969 , Gerry and Sylvia Anderson made a feature film called ' Doppelganger ' ( a . k . a . ' Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun ' ) which postulated the theory that Earth had a twin , inhabited by duplicates . That idea is revisited here . The absurd notion of one person having two brains ( where could the other one conceivably go ? ) aside , it is an intriguing tale , affording a glimpse into an alternative future for the Alphans , one in which Koenig and Alan are dead , Bergman survived , Sandra had Paul's babies , and Helena lost pride in her appearance . Still sounds more appealing than Year 2 to me . The lovely Judy Geeson guest stars as ' Regina ' , although gets little to do other than act in a deranged manner . I felt most sorry for Alan - fancy being married to Judy Geeson , only to then discover it never happened . Time corrects itself eventually , and the normal course of history is resumed , all with no help from Dr . Who whatsoever ! |
401,311 | 7,743,887 | 590,989 | 8 | The Commercialisation Of Camelot ! | One year before ' Monty Python ' get hold of the King Arthur legend , ' The Goodies ' gave us their take on it ( well , sort of ) . Tim receives a letter from his Uncle King Arthur ( real name : Arthur King ) , who thinks he is the King Arthur of legend . Married to Queen Doris , he ( along with Uncle Sir Lancelot ) lives in a house in 33 Acacia Road , Solihull , which has been made to resemble a medieval castle , replete with moat and drawbridge . Uncle King Arthur wants to go to Bognor , and requests that The Goodies mind ' Camelot ' for the duration of the trip . They throw themselves into the spirit of the thing by dressing in appropriate clothing - Graeme as a minstrel , Tim a jester , and Bill wearing a coat of arms ( that is , arms of the sort used to connected one's hands to one's body ) . In lieu of a codpiece he wears a packet of frozen fish fingers . Graeme decides to throw ' Camelot ' open to the public . In a few short hours , they have the public queueing to rescue damsels in distress , hear the twitter of medieval minstrels ( of the black and white variety ) , and see The Royal Boar ( on wheels ) . But an evil Town Planner ( Alfie Bass ) wants to demolish ' Camelot ' for redevelopment purposes and when the Goodies refuse to sign it over , he sends them to the Torture Chamber . . . The fourth series of ' The Goodies ' got off to a good start with this rollicking episode , although it would not be until the following year that they entered what might be termed their ' Golden Age ' . Alfie Bass is marvellous fun here ; watch his malignant glee as he prepares to inflict untold pain on our heroes . He would , of course , reappear ( as a different character ) in the classic ' The Goodies & The Beanstalk ' . Listen out for the applause when the dog's name - ' Spot ' - is mentioned . This was a reference to a long-running gag in the radio series ' I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again ' . Plenty of ye olde puns and jolly japes to get the most jaded viewer groaning ( and grinning ) . I love the episode's other ' Torture Chamber ' - a potty with spikes ! Yes , there's even a fire-breathing dragon , but it turns out to be two men from Solihull Council in a costume ! Funniest moment - the Town Planner asks for a pair of red-hot pokers . He picks them up the wrong way and burns his own hands ! |
401,072 | 7,743,887 | 803,385 | 8 | Get Your Hair Cut ! | The latest directive from Cromwell's office is that the boys have their hair cut short and the girls wear longer skirts . The children are lined up in the playground so that the teachers - including Potter - can conduct army-style inspections . Seeing this as an affront to their civil liberties , 5C - led by Terry Stringer - stage a mass protest in the assembly hall . They call off the sit-in under the condition that one of their number be allowed to attend future staff meetings . Surprisingly , Cromwell agrees . 5C elects as its representative the less-than bright ' Godber ' Gibbons . . . At my school , discipline was enforced to such an extent that anyone daring to turn up for lessons wearing jewellery , jeans or platform shoes was automatically sent home . Long-hair inspections akin to the one seen in this programme were frequent . Some girls protested their right to wear trousers , but their protests fell on deaf ears . No-one apparently thought to stage a sit-in . Two new teachers are introduced ; one is Bernard . No , not Hedges . Holley . Best known for playing ' P . C . Newcombe ' in ' Z-Cars ' , Holley's ' John Hurst ' looks like a belated attempt to recreate ' Hedges ' . Hurst used to teach at Weaver Street School , and knows Stringer to be a trouble-maker . As was the case with his predecessor , he isn't given much to do . 5C don't seem surprised to see him again . The other newcomer is the charmingly-named ' Miss Gloria Petting ' , played by the very funny Vivienne Martin . She is quite unprepared for the horrors of Fenn Street School . Charles Bolton's ' Godber ' takes centre stage in this Esmonde / Larbey penned episode . Fine if you like him ( I don't ) . The ideal place for him is Borstal , not Fenn Street . Funniest moment - Godber smashing Des ' guitar over Terry's head ! |
401,357 | 7,743,887 | 590,990 | 8 | The Goodies In The Club | The Minister For Trade & Domestic Affairs wants the Goodies to recover compromising photos of her taken at the Playgirl Club . Tim goes undercover in drag . The Club is a veritable den of iniquity , with strip shows , saunas , massage rooms and displays of openly uninhibited behaviour . When Tim fails to report back , Graeme and Bill decide to rescue him . But the only way to get in is to pose as ' male bunnies ' a . k . a . ' Wolves ' . . . This satire on the so-called Permissive Society was made before the B . B . C . came to see ' The Goodies ' as a children's show . Its also one of the best episodes of Season 1 , despite boasting little by way of visual humour . A pre-'Are You Being Served ? ' Mollie Sugden plays the talkative Minister , with ' Carry On ' blonde bombshell Liz Fraser as the club's Mae West-style proprietor . Queenie Watts would later play Arthur Mullard's wife ' Lil ' in I . T . V . ' s ' Romany Jones ' and ' Yus My Dear ' . Tim gets to use his ' Lady Constance ' voice from ' I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again ' . Yes , the scenes in the Playgirl Club are sexist ( there's some nudity on display ) , and this has led to the episode being branded ' politically incorrect ' . U . K . Gold included it in a season of programmes called ' The Dog House ' . I can't help thinking that if it had been written by a woman though , it would today be regarded as a monument to female liberation . Funniest moment - Bill and Graeme attempting to identify the club's owner by the colour of her underwear ! Yes , that scene ! |
400,986 | 7,743,887 | 803,383 | 8 | Before ' Rocky ' , There Was . . . ' Duffy ' ! | Mr . Hedges is given the duties of Sports Master , and sets about attempting to teach 5C boxing . He isn't very good at it though , and Duffy almost decks him . Duffy turns down the chance to represent Fenn Street School in a forthcoming inter-school boxing match . He does not want nor need the adulation of others . So he thinks . A visit to a local swimming baths proves problematic , especially for Dennis , unable to afford a decent pair of trunks . Sharon and Maureen alter a women's bathing costume to fit him . He isn't in the water long , before he loses the garment . Duffy also has a problem - he cannot swim , and does not want his class mates to know . He confides this secret to Sharon , who tells the rest of 5C . This episode will bring back awful memories for anyone of a certain age who dreaded that regular school visit to the swimming baths . In my day , it was compulsory , and if you were unlucky enough to forget your costume , you were made to swim without it . It happened to me once , and even now I still can feel that terrible burning shame as I was made to jump into the pool stark naked in front of the entire class - with girls present . Eventually , Duffy learns to swim , and regains his status as the ' boss ' of 5C . He goes on to take part in the boxing match , representing Fenn Street School . He wins easily . But the schools then round on each other . . . Funniest moment - poor Dennis exiting the pool minus his costume . In the film ' Holiday On The Buses ' ( 1973 ) , Olive found herself in a very similar predicament . |
401,169 | 7,743,887 | 803,380 | 8 | Home Time | Doris Ewell has married Mr . Sibley , but has no time for a honeymoon as she is snowed under with work . But her new husband has a surprise for her - he has booked a week in Tunisia . Potter , meanwhile , is bragging about how rock-solid his marriage to Ruby is . He is therefore astonished when a note on his kitchen table informs him that his wife has run away as she cannot stand him any longer . The caretaker arranges to meet Ruby at ' our place ' , but takes this to mean the place where they first met , now a seedy strip-joint . As the clock ticks away , Doris and Sibley rush to catch their plane , with the Fenn Street teachers in tow . . . Season 4 of ' Please Sir ! ' is a mixed bag ; following the departure of the original 5C and ' Bernard Hedges ' , various new characters were tried out . ' Ffitchett-Brown ' would have worked with better scripts . Classes 4C and 5C were truly horrid . Things worsened with the merger between the Fenn Street and Weaver Street schools , and the arrival of ' Mr . Hurst ' and ' Miss Petting ' . Terry , Godber , Des , Daisy and Celia were no match for the old line-up . John Hurst was more like Hedges than Ffitchett-Brown had been , but again suffered from being given little to do . Nervous ' Gloria Petting ' provided some much-needed laughs as Cromwell's new love interest . L . W . T . obviously decided that ' Please Sir ! ' did not work without Hedges and the old 5C , hence no fifth series . As the axe fell on its parent show , ' The Fenn Street Gang ' sailed on , occasionally allowing for guest appearances from the likes of ' Smithy ' and ' Price ' ( ' Rough Justice ' ) , and the ' Look-In ' comic strip lasted until 1973 . Deryck Guyler went straight from this into the B . B . C . ' s revival of ' Sykes ' . On Christmas Day 1976 , the ' Please Sir ! ' movie premiered on I . T . V . in a post-Queen's Speech slot . In the mid-'80's , I . T . V . repeated the second season on Saturday afternoons along with ' On The Buses ' in the slot vacated by the recently cancelled ' World Of Sport ' . Channel 4 considered the show important enough to include as part of its ' T . V . Heaven ' series in 1991 . The episode chosen was ' The Welcome Mat ' . ' Please Sir ! ' , while never a classic , gave enjoyment to a lot of people , and for that reason alone , deserves to be fondly remembered . |
401,131 | 7,743,887 | 224,848 | 8 | The Joke's On Us | Millions watched this every Sunday evening ( including myself ) , mainly to laugh at the clips of horrible foreign programmes such as ' Endurance ' , ' Ultra Quiz ' and ' The Price Is Right ' . Back in the early ' 80's , we could safely laugh in the knowledge that our television was the best in the world . Clive made an excellent presenter , erudite as well as witty . Unfortunately , British producers then thought it would be a great idea to copy the programmes being ridiculed . The three listed above were subsequently adapted for British audiences . Twenty-odd years later , our television is indistinguishable from the infantile dross Clive regularly used to make fun of . Noisy , game-show contestants prepared to make utter fools of themselves , hyper-active hosts , tacky sets , live insects consumed with relish by publicity-seeking idiots , we've got them all . Worse , Clive isn't around to mock them . Hasn't the ' joke ' rather backfired somewhat ? |
401,350 | 7,743,887 | 590,982 | 8 | In my day , you couldn't ride until you'd been born ! | Tim visits his great ( and fabulously rich ) Uncle Butcher at Tally-Ho Towers . Scenting money in the air , Bill and Graeme go with him . Uncle Butcher looks like Jimmy Edwards , walks side-saddle and is obsessed by fox hunting . During a hunt , he drops dead , so the Goodies mount his head on a wall in the study . Tim inherits the family estate - which he plans to turn into a fox hunters ' paradise . The others get jobs as domestic servants , hoping to restore his personality . . . Tim Brooke-Taylor plays two roles - ' Tim ' and ' Uncle Butcher ' . As soon as he inherits the estate , he changes into a parody of his uncle . Thirty years before the ban on fox hunting , ' The Goodies ' called for it by portraying its exponents as overweight , drunken cretins with too much time on their hands . They weren't finished with them either ; the opening scene of the Season Seven episode ' Dodonuts ' similarly ridicules the gentry . Funniest scene - Tim receiving aversion therapy to fox hunting . GRAEME : Do you like fox hunting ? TIM : Yes . ( Whacks him over head with mallet ) |
401,091 | 7,743,887 | 591,032 | 8 | When Bill Became Randy ! | The British Pop Charts are in a shocking state , being full of salacious rubbish aimed at sex-mad teenagers . Sensing a gap in the market for wholesome family entertainers , The Goodies audition for top impresario Isabel Chintz ( Barbara Mitchell ) , under the name ' The Cherubs ' . She hates them , so they go on the top-rated ' Maxie Grease Show ' , singing a mawkish song entitled : ' Mummy , I Don't Like My Meat ' . They win - and Isabel is back on the scene . But she only wants Bill . The little bearded bird watcher is given a new name - ' Randy Pandy ' - and sex god image and before you can say ' How's About That Then ' the groupies are all over him . Its up to Tim and Graeme to save their friend before he does something foolish - like actually making a record . . . Originally intended to be part of Season Three , this was one of the first episodes to dispense with the trademark speeded-up film sequences . The ' Maxie Grease Show ' is a spoof of the dreadful ' Opportunity Knocks ! ' , starring Hughie Green . Barbara Mitchell's gum-chewing Aussie sounds an awful lot like Germaine Greer in her ' Super Groupie ' phase . The notion that Radio One would ban pop records for being rude was amusingly far-fetched at the time ; a decade later , D . J . Mike Read banned ' Relax ' by Frankie Goes To Hollywood . Some good gags at the expense of early ' 70's Britpop , including a Jimmy Saville impression by the late John Peel , and armed security guards outside the ' Top Of The Pops ' studio at B . B . C . T . V . Centre . The Goodies appeared on the real thing the following year when they brought out ' The Inbetweenies ' . Funniest moment - The Goodies making Granny cry ! |
401,012 | 7,743,887 | 591,018 | 8 | Look ! I'm Beautiful ! | Tim has been putting on weight , and resembles a Christmas pudding on legs , so he tries to slim with the help of Radio 2 D . J . Terry Wogan's ' Fight The Flab ' campaign . Housewives are taken to an exclusive health farm and put through a strict regimen of exercise and starvation by smirking attendants . When Tim returns to the office , he resembles Marilyn Monroe in her prime . Graeme joins Radio 2 after Wogan is sacked and supplies voices for all their programmes including ' The Archers ' ( a mistake here . Its a Radio 4 show ) and ' Square Table ' . Tim enters the ' Miss Housewife Of The Year ' beauty contest , but Graeme tells his listeners the criteria for the contest has changed - instead of beautiful , thin girls , they now want fat , ugly ones . Which means Tim has to slip back into his old gluttonous ways . At the Albert Hall , the contest goes ahead , with three milkmen making up the panel of judges . Tim wins , but the contest has been fixed . The contestants are furious . Cut to the chase . . . One of the weaker Season Five episodes , but still full of laughs , ' Radio 2 ' sees the Goodies taking the Michael ( Aspel ) out of beauty contests and the shameful exploitation of the obese by slim , healthy people out to make a fast buck . Politically correct this ain't , particularly as the finale has the large ladies chasing our heroes Benny Hill fashion ( ' Yakety Sax ' is even played just before the end credits roll ) , flattening them with their massive torsos and knocking them down like skittles . Michael Aspel notches up his second appearance in the show , his first was in ' Kitten Kong ' , and gets a massive cheer when he walks on stage . Graeme gets full rein to display his talent for mimicry , including a stunningly accurate Terry Wogan ( whom he later played in ' Politics ' ) , the cast of ' The Archers ' , Jimmy Saville , Emperor Rosko and the late Alan ' Fluff ' Freeman . Jimmy Young , however , is played by Bill Oddie . Note the ' I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again ' graffiti on the wall of the Radio 2 building . It was , of course , the name of the famous B . B . C . radio sketch show that starred John Cleese , Jo Kendall , David Hatch and . . . um . . . Tim Brooke-Taylor , Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden ! Funniest moment - Graeme using a ventriloquist's dummy to do an impression of Tony Blackburn . " I like bubble gum music . " , says the dummy , " Particularly Little Jimmy Osmond ! " . The jeers from the audience suggests they were about as fond of Osmond as they were of Blackburn . |
401,355 | 7,743,887 | 591,014 | 8 | Who Has Short Hair And Goes Round Hitting People ? | The police recruit the Goodies to help them change their image . Tim , Graeme and Bill become ' hippy ' policemen - wearing sunglasses , handing out flowers , and generally being nice to people . But the new image doesn't sit too well with Commissioner Butcher - he has the Goodies arrested , and put on trial . . . The sight of spaced-out policemen dancing in slow motion , uprooting ' No Bathing Allowed ' signs , and skinny-dipping is the main image one takes away from this episode , also known as ' Give Police A Chance ' . It drew criticism at the time for portraying the police as thuggish and corrupt ; well , they had to be seen as such else they wouldn't have wanted a change of image , would they ? The late Paul Whitsun-Jones makes a suitably hard-faced police commissioner , continually shouting and hitting people over the head ; he's also to be seen in the ' Avengers ' episode ' Room Without A View ' and ' The Mutants ' adventure of ' Dr . Who ' . Roland McLeod also appeared alongside Tim Brooke-Taylor in ' Its Marty ' . Funniest moment - Butcher's reaction to a picture of Tony Blackburn ( I can't bring myself to write the word ! ) |
401,452 | 7,743,887 | 81,946 | 8 | Sing A Soppy Song In Voices So Pathetic . . . ! | ' Three Of A Kind ' crept into B . B . C . - 1's schedules in 1981 with very little fanfare , yet by the time of its third season two years later it was firmly established as one of the most popular comedy sketch shows on the air . Other than Lenny Henry ( familiar to viewers because of ' New Faces ' , ' The Fosters ' and ' Tiswas ' ) , the cast - Tracey Ullman and David Copperfield - had had little or no T . V . exposure , giving the show an unmistakable freshness . Various recurring characters developed ; there was Henry's Rastafarian rap artist ' Fred Dread ' , Copperfield's ' Medallion Man ' , all gold rings and sharp suits , while Ullman's upper-class trendy ' Ros ' gave the world the exclamation " Ya ! " . Alternative humour this wasn't ; even though Ben Elton and Angus Deayton were among the writers , some of the sketches ( such as ' Australian Blue Peter ' ) could have come out of ' Russ Abbot's Madhouse ' . One very funny item parodied the sickly pop group ' Dollar ' ( or ' Dollop ' as they were renamed , with Ullman as ' Thereza Bazar ' and Copperfield as ' David Van Day ' ) , another took off the American series ' Fame ' . After it ended , Henry landed his own show , Ullman went to the States , only Copperfield failed to achieve the expected solo stardom . ' Three Of A Kind ' glittered like a 500W light bulb in its short run , ensuring it is fondly remembered by a generation of thirty somethings . |
401,100 | 7,743,887 | 617,038 | 8 | Robert or Roberta ? | Robert , a young orphan , lives in the country with his puritanical Aunt , Belle Weston . She treats him as though he were a girl . He is kept away from school , made to wear Shirley Temple-type clothes , forced to play with dolls , and referred to at all times as ' Roberta ' . Whenever he misbehaves , he receives harsh punishment . Drake , an American , gets a job in the Weston house as handyman , and is appalled at Belle's inhuman treatment of the child . But he dare not tell the police as she threatens to notify the authorities that his work permit has expired . After making off with a valuable bracelet , Drake decides to blow the whistle on Belle . . . Based on a story by Charles Beaumont , this is a startling allegory of human sexuality . The boy is being forced to lead an unnatural life by pretending to be something he is not , and his protests fall on deaf ears . Given that this was made only two years or so after homosexuality was legalised in Britain , I'm sure it struck a chord with some viewers . George Maharis , who plays ' Drake ' , would have been familiar to television audiences from ' Route 66 ' . Barbara Jefford is outstanding as the nutty-as-a-fruitcake ' Belle ' , as is Kim Burfield as the tormented child . Adrienne Posta , cast as the unnamed girl whom Drake beds , was ' Rita ' in the 1971 film ' The Alf Garnett Saga ' . |
401,105 | 7,743,887 | 617,039 | 8 | Death In Paradise | My copy of this episode lists the title as ' One On An Island ' . Where the desert came from I have no idea . Possibly it was used on different prints . It was based on a story by Donald E . Westlake , who as ' Richard Stark ' wrote the classic crime novel ' Point Blank ' and its numerous sequels . Brandon De Wilde is ' Alec Worthing ' , a banker who uses his inheritance to buy a boat , which he names ' The Victoria ' , in honour of his dead mother . He intends travelling the world . During a gale , the boat is wrecked , marooning him on a tropical island , whose only other inhabitants appear to be goats . With no hope of rescue , Alec grows used to his new home , but experiences agonising loneliness . One day , he sees a beautiful girl stepping out of the sea . She is called Vicki , the sole survivor of a ship wreck . Alec and Vicki become lovers . But a serpent enters this Eden in the shape of ' Joe ' , a pilot washed ashore in a dinghy . Alec worries that Vicki will be attracted to him . Keeping her out of sight , he murders the interloper and conceals the body . . . Like ' Eve ' , this is also about a loser who seeks refuge in a fantasy world . When it transpires that Vicki has the same name as Alec's late mother , I thought for one moment she was going to turn out to be a reincarnation , in which case an element of incest would have arisen , definitely unsuitable for 1969 television audiences . Thankfully that's not the case . Suzanna Leigh is the gorgeous ' Vicki ' ; among her other credits are the Bulldog Drummond adventure ' Deadlier than The Male ' from 1966 . David Bauer , cast as ' Uncle George ' , cropped up an awful lot in I . T . C . shows such as ' The Saint ' and ' The Prisoner ' . I have no idea where it was filmed , but it looks like they used a real island , and wisely did not try to mock up the whole thing in a studio . De Wilde , best remembered for his role as ' Joey Starrett ' in ' Shane ' in 1953 , died in a road accident two years after this was made . |
401,657 | 7,743,887 | 184,292 | 8 | He Was , Of Course , Extremely Dead . . . | Created by Tim Heald , Simon Bognor was an agent of a special investigations department of the Board Of Trade . If a newspaper editor was murdered or some bounders tried to kill a champion poodle or steal the formula for a new type of honey , Bognor was , despite being a bit dim , the man to sort it out . The poor man's 007 , you might say . He was happily married to the lovely Monica , though occasionally pretty women threw themselves his way . His boss was the gruff Parkinson . In 1981 , Thames T . V . turned ' Bognor ' into a twice-weekly series , starring David Horovitch . Three books formed the basis for the show's first ( and only ) run - ' Unbecoming Habits ' , ' Deadline ' , and ' Let Sleeping Dogs Die ' . A ' T . V . Times ' cover at the time showed Bognor in the distinguished company of John Steed , Callan , Simon Templar and Dick Barton . As it turned out , he was lucky to find himself mentioned in the same breath as Inspector Clouseau . Critics and public alike hated ' Bognor ' with a vengeance . In spite of scripts by reliable word smiths such as T . R . Bowen , the show failed to capture the books ' satirical tone , while Horovitch's deadpan performance won him few fans . Rare acclaim came from a ' News Of The World ' reader after an episode aired in which Simon was seen sporting a busted lip following a bruising encounter with thugs . In an era when television heroes were lucky to get a hair out of place , it was a most unusual sight indeed . Despite guest appearances from thespians such as Robin Bailey , Peter Jeffrey and Patrick Troughton , viewers did not give a tinker's cuss whodunnit . I . T . V . yanked ' Bognor ' from prime-time , dumping the remaining six episodes in a graveyard slot . Horovitch later played ' Detective Inspector Slack ' in the B . B . C . ' Miss Marple ' series starring Joan Hickson . It would be nice to see ' Bognor ' again , if only for that ' Avengers'-style title sequence - a catchy electronic tune by Mike Steer accompanied moving targets ( on which Bognor can be seen ) at a fun-fair rifle range . These images were later reproduced on the covers of the Arrow tie-in paperbacks . |
401,108 | 7,743,887 | 617,045 | 8 | Dreams Of Death | Opportunist Greg Richards is in a posh London restaurant with model Sue Tarleton . He wants her to pose for nude photographs , but she refuses . A nervous waitress warns Sue not to leave until 10 P . M . , and then to take a taxi home . Sue ignores the advice . Shortly afterwards , she is killed when scaffolding collapses on her . Greg seeks out the waitress , the shy Carrie Clark , to find out how she knew that Sue was about to die . Carrie has strange dreams in which she can sees someone's death before it happens . Greg marries her , and exploits her talent to save lives , in return for huge cash rewards . . . Scripted by Michael J . Bird and Robert Bloch , and based on a story by ' I am Legend ' author Richard Matheson , along with Bloch's ' The Indian Spirit Guide , this is one of the more ' Twilight Zone ' like episodes , based on the premise of a corrupt man getting his just desserts . Not particularly scary or suspenseful , its nonetheless enjoyable , boasting an interesting cast - Zena Walker , Justine Lord , Jan Holden , David Langton - as well as America's Michael Callan . In common with other ' Journey ' episodes such as ' Eve ' , there's a nice flavour of Swinging ' 60's London . Doubtless included as an cynical marketing ploy at the time , it now makes the series essential viewing for anyone interested in the era . |
400,964 | 7,743,887 | 617,041 | 8 | A Rose By Any Other Name | Steven Miller is puzzled to receive an invitation to a costume party from a man he has never met . Taking his vintage Bugatti into the countryside , he asks for directions to Meachum Hall , but the old man wanders off without answering . Miller finds the drive full of old cars , much like his own . Changing into a ' Jesse James ' outfit , he attempts to find out why Sir Robert Sawyer invited him . The other guests are a pretty strange bunch too ; the only welcoming face belongs to Rose , a beautiful young woman dressed as a butterfly . As the evening progresses , Miller learns that she is betrothed to John , a man she does not love . Rose sent the invitation . She begs Miller to take her away from the house . She seems genuinely frightened as though somehow sensing impending disaster . . . This was the first episode of ' Unknown ' I ever saw , repeated in a late night slot in the ' 70's , and it encouraged me to seek out the rest of the series . Based on a story by actor William Abney , its a ghost story with a difference - the protagonists died in 1929 ( the house was hit by lightning during a storm ) , but have mysteriously come back to life forty years later to recreate the tragedy . All seemed resigned to their fate , except Rose . Chad Everett is ' Miller ' , while a pre-'Day Of The Jackal ' Edward Fox is ' Sir Robert ' . ' Rose ' is played by the lovely Susan Brodrick , who later appeared in Hammer's ' Dr . Jekyll & Sister Hyde ' . A special mention for the late Norman Chappell as ' Friar Tuck ' ; this frog-faced actor graced many comedy shows of the ' 60's and ' 70's , including ' Some Mothers Do Ave Em ' ( he was the writer ' Mark Faraday ' in the ' Love Thy Neighbour ' episode ) . The ending , though touchingly done , does not make much sense . Why does Rose need Miller to get her away from the house ? Why does she not simply walk away from the place ? She is able to reach Loker's cottage without much difficulty later when she is dying , so why not go before ? Directed by Alan Gibson , later to helm the final ' Dracula ' movies starring Christopher Lee . |
401,259 | 7,743,887 | 281,287 | 8 | Terror In The Countryside | The final season of ' Out Of The Unknown ' , again produced by Alan Bromley , eschewed the science fiction for which the show was renowned , concentrating instead on supernatural tales . Bromley's reasoning was that , in the aftermath of the Apollo moon landings , science fiction was no longer thrilling . He had apparently not noticed the continuing popularity of ' Dr . Who ' and newcomer ' Doomwatch ' over on B . B . C . - 1 , also the U . S . import ' Star Trek ' ( still a comparatively new show at that time ) . ' To Lay A Ghost ' was penned by the talented Michael J . Bird , author of ' Who Pays The Ferryman ' and ' The Lotus Eaters ' . Newlyweds Eric and Diana Carver ( Iain Gregory and Lesley-Anne Down ) move into a country house . Diana was raped when she was fifteen and has never slept with her husband . While developing photographs taken of her in the grounds , Eric notices what appears to be a man in the background , even though no-one else was in shot when the picture was taken . Diana develops a strange obsession with the house , talking to it as though it were a living thing and sleepwalking in the garden at around 2 A . M . Eric gets her to pose with a crossbow , and she tries to shoot him . When a statue falls off a roof , he calls in Phillimore ( Peter Barkworth ) , a psychic investigator . They learn that the house was inhabited years earlier by a madman who raped and killed two woman . Apparently his ghost is in residence . . . A young ( and fabulously beautiful ) Lesley-Anne Down takes up the lead female role here . Three years later , she would move into Eaton Place in the I . T . V . drama ' Upstairs , Downstairs ' as rich brat ' Georgina Worsley ' . As ' Phiilimore ' we get Peter Barkworth and as ever he does not disappoint . This creepy story could never be made now because of the revelation at the end that Diana enjoyed her rape and has waited for years for the same thing to happen again . Even her husband is disgusted , and walks out . For years the fallacy existed that rape was pleasurable for a certain type of woman - Susan George's character in ' Straw Dogs ' certainly seemed to be one , while Ian Fleming in ' Casino Royale ' referred to ' the sweet tang of rape ' - but times have changed . I wish Bird had come up with a different ending . The existing one ruins an otherwise impressive episode . The double meaning in the title was apparently intentional . |
401,045 | 7,743,887 | 612,732 | 8 | When the chips are down , send for Alexander The Great ! | Glen A . Larson was a humble scriptwriter back in 1968 , he went on to create or co-create ' Alias Smith & Jones ' , ' Knight Rider ' , ' Magnum P . I . ' , ' The Fall Guy ' , and the original ( and best ) ' Battlestar Galactica ' . This was one of his early scripts . Willard Knox , an S . I . A . agent , is arrested by the Petrovian Secret Police on charges of espionage . In his possession is microfilm containing The Miloslav Document , which Noah wants . So he asks Mundy to retrieve it . A heavily disguised Al infiltrates the maximum security prison where Knox is held , only to discover that the spy no longer has the microfilm . He smuggled it out , and refuses to say how unless Mundy helps him escape . During the break out , Knox is killed , but passes onto Mundy the whereabouts of the microfilm - it is concealed in a valuable ring belonging to Ambassaddor Marku's wife Trish . Far from being over , the mission is just beginning . . . A pleasing episode , with a good supporting cast including Mark Lenard ( best remembered as ' Ambassador Sarek ' ( Mr . Spock's Dad ) from ' Star Trek ' , and Taina Elg , who was handcuffed to Kenneth More in the 1959 version of ' The Thirty-Nine Steps ' . We never find out why the Miloslav Document is so important , but it hardly matters . Favourite moment - the prison break-out . |
401,347 | 7,743,887 | 68,636 | 8 | This Film Made The Headmaster Blush ! | Over the years , many television comedians have tried to make the jump into movies , with varying degrees of success . Morecambe & Wise made three vehicles , but never seemed to find the right one . Peter Cook and Dudley Moore fared somewhat better with ' Bedazzled ' ( 1967 ) , but went downhill from there . More recently , Harry Enfield came unstuck in ' Kevin & Perry Go Large ' , and the less said about Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson's ' Guest House Paradiso ' the better . In 1972 , Dick Emery starred in this racy comedy , written specially for him by his regular writers , John Warren and John Singer . It cast him as ' Charlie Tully ' , a Cockney con man with a unique talent for getting the rich to part with their money . They believe everything he says . With his friend Reggie Campbell-Peek ( Ronald Fraser ) , they swindle £500 , 000 out of an Italian millionaire by pretending to be representatives of the British Royal Family . Naturally , said millionaire is not happy and calls on the Mafia . Charlie is arrested at Heathrow Airport and months later emerges from jail to find Reggie has deposited the money in a Swiss bank . Before he can tell him more , he is killed when part of a building collapses on him . Not only is the Mafia after Charlie but also London gangsters headed by Sid Sabbath ( Derren Nesbitt ) , an outfit which , according to Charlie ' makes the Kray Twins look like The Beverley Sisters ' . Charlie tracks down four of Reggie's old girlfriends , each of whom has a portion of the name of the bank and account number tattooed on her posterior . Each murder attempt on Charlie is thwarted by the ' London Family ' , who want him alive long enough to find out where the money is . . . I have fond memories of the first time I saw this . It was December 1974 and , as a traditional end-of-term treat , we got a film at school . I don't know who selected this , obviously someone must have thought it would be cosy family entertainment . The draughty dinner hall was full of red faces ( mostly the teachers ) which got redder as the film , with its cartoon violence , female nudity ( including Liza Goddard ) and over-ripe innuendo , progressed . Of course we dirty-minded kids loved every wicked minute of it ! Warren and Singer's inventive script gives Emery full rein to display his talents for multi-characterisation ( old favourites such as ' Mandy ' , ' Lampwick ' , ' Hettie The Spinster ' appear . Pity room was not found for ' The Rev . Chislet ' and ' Bovver Boy ' ) , and is helped by Cliff Owen's glossy direction . Christopher Gunning's music is good too , at times you can pick out snatches of the ' Poirot ' theme to be ! The excellent supporting cast included Ronald Fraser , Pat Coombs , Derren Nesbitt , Cheryl Kennedy ( nice bum , Cheryl ) and Norman Bird amongst others . Yes , its dated and sexist , but still good fun . The only negative point would be the somewhat flat ending in which Charlie , dressed as a priest , tries to sell the Sistine Chapel to a couple of American tourists . I would have liked something more akin to the finale of ' The Italian Job ' . It is strange though that this film did not lead to others for the star . He resumed his television series , and stayed with it until his death in 1983 . |
400,826 | 7,743,887 | 469,592 | 8 | The Joy Of Six | This half-hour documentary was screened by Channel 4 following a repeat of the final ' Prisoner ' episode ( ' Fall Out ' ) in 1984 , and has never been rerun by the station or made available on D . V . D . This is strange , seeing how it features interviews with many of the people responsible for the show , such as producer David Tomblin , directors Don Chaffey and Pat Jackson , set designer Jack Shampan , actor Alexis Kanner , script editor George Markstein , and , surprisingly , Patrick McGoohan himself . The filmed interviews were linked by actor Saul Reichlin , occupying a ' Green Dome ' style control room . No attempt was made to analyse the series in depth or interpret its hidden meanings , instead the show's history was presented in a straightforward fashion . Particularly interesting was Markstein's assertion that ' No . 6 ' was always intended to be ' John Drake ' of ' Danger Man ' fame , despite McGoohan's frequent denials . The man himself was , as you'd expect , non-committal , cheekily signing off with ' Be Seeing You ! ' . |
401,385 | 7,743,887 | 61,452 | 8 | They Used To Say A Good Spy Was A Pure Spy ! | ' Casino Royale ' holds the distinction of being the very first James Bond film ever to play on British television . It went out on Boxing Day 1973 , and I can remember being thoroughly confused by the thing . The plot kept jumping about from one place to another , a female character ( ' Lady Fiona ' ) who started out Scottish suddenly became French , and David Niven's Sir James Bond seemed to bear little resemblance to the dashing super-spy I read about in newspapers and magazines . Of course it later became clear that this was no bona fide 007 epic , but an all-star comedy spectacular along the lines of ' Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines ' . Two years later , I . T . V . screened ' Dr . No ' - the first real Bond movie . ' Casino Royale ' begins with the heads of the world's intelligence services asking Sir James Bond to come out of retirement to help deal with SMERSH . He refuses , so they rather ungallantly blow up his house . M ( John Huston ) is killed , and Bond drives to Scotland to hand over his final remains ( a toupee in a box ) to his widow . What he does not know is that Lady Fiona has been replaced by Agent Mimi ( Deborah Kerr ) . The girls posing as her daughters are SMERSH agents too . Their job is to wreck Bond's celibate ( ! ) image . The plan fails and Bond returns to London , where he orders all existing agents to pose under his name to confuse the enemy . He then recruits Vesper Lynd ( Ursula Andress ) and gives her the job of getting the compulsive gambler Evelyn Tremble ( Peter Sellers ) to beat SMERSH agent Le Chiffre ( Orson Welles ) at baccarat . . . When reviewing this , many fall into the trap of comparing it to the Eon Bond films . Though based on Ian Fleming's first Bond book , it has little in common . Terry Southern was one of the many uncredited writers . Five directors were involved , the first being Joe McGrath , later to direct the cult classic ' The Magic Christian ' ( 1970 ) , based on Southern's novel . Taken on its own terms , it is a lot of mad fun ( almost Pythonesque in fact ) , and boasts stupendous art direction , photography ( by Jack Hildyard and Nicolas Roeg ) and special effects . Some scenes , like Mata Bond's excursion to Berlin , do not work , while others such as Evelyn Tremble's baccarat duel with LeChiffre , are ridiculously enjoyable . Welles would have made a great villain in a real Bond flick . David Niven is delightful as the retired master spy Sir James Bond , one wishes he had been in more scenes . Unlike Sean Connery's version , this one stammers , has an artificial kneecap , and hates women . Peter Sellers and Woody Allen are also on good form . The main problem is the fragmented plot , and the endless procession of irrelevant guest stars . Less would definitely have been more . Burt Bacharach's song ' The Look Of Love ' wouldn't have disgraced an Eon Bond movie . ' Casino Royale ' needs to be seen as a product of its era , when Bondmania ruled the world . A film of this calibre could not be made now . Despite being overlong and self-indulgent , it still contrives to be great fun . |
401,409 | 7,743,887 | 824,931 | 8 | Its good , innit ! | One of the reasons for the failure of the I . T . V . series ' Director's Commentary ' was that in taking the rise out of ' 70's television it was hardly doing anything new . Rod Hull got there first with the children's show ' Emu's Broadcasting Company ' , and its childish spoofs hit the bullseye far more often than Rob Bryden's poorly written and delivered sarcastic narration . Like Eric Idle's ' Rutland Weekend Television ' , ' E . B . C . ' was supposed to be the world's smallest television station , whose programmes were cheap rip-offs of other shows , such as ' Dr . Emu ' ( ' The Deadly Dustbins ' were more frightening than anything seen in the Graham Williams era of ' Dr . Who ' - were they the inspiration for the man-eating bin in 2005's ' Rose ' ? ) , ' Emu Trek : A Space Oddity ' , ' Grandstand Of Sport ' ( whose titles came courtesy of a man on a bike and another behind him on foot each carrying one half of a banner ) and ' The Eurovision Pong Contest ' . ' The Searching Beak Of Emu ' sent up the documentary format . In the first , broadcast on / 75 , Rod takes Emu to a Manchester supermarket , where the bird goes berserk attacking not only Rod but also customers and staff , much to the delight of those children present . A regular character was ' The Duchess Of Gladstone ' , played by the late Billy Dainty , and obviously modelled on The Queen just as Stanley Baxter's ' The Duchess Of Brendagh ' was . When we first see The Duchess , she officially declares a playground open by cutting a ribbon , then proceeds to run riot on the swings , roundabouts , slide etc . Hull himself played ' Uncle Albert ' , a Northern relative keen on doling out worthless advice to youngsters . Personally , I found Rod Hull funnier than the bird on his arm . Rubber-legged Emu , with his usual trick of attacking everyone and everything , got boring pretty quickly , the ' Parkinson ' interview excepted . But Hull was such a wonderful performer ( what a strange hairstyle the man had , a sort of three-sided fringe ) it compensated for this defect . For that marvellous comedian Billy Dainty , however , this was a tremendous comedown - playing second fiddle to an emu ( and a fake one at that ) , especially as he'd only recently fronted his own show on Thames Television - ' Billy Dainty Esq . ' . Still , it kept him on our screens . In the first edition , Bill tried to front a keep-fit programme , and Emu kept changing the ' exercise ' music , giving Dainty a golden opportunity to do some of his legendary ' eccentric dancing ' . While hardly great satire , ' E . B . C . ' was , along with ' Rentaghost ' , the best children's comedy series on television at that time . |
401,412 | 7,743,887 | 71,061 | 8 | What Was In The Tis-Tub ? | Well , which did you prefer ? ' Multi-Coloured Swap Shop ' or ' Tiswas ' ? To tell the truth , I never watched a complete edition of either , preferring to channel surf , but of the two , ' Tiswas ' was clearly the best . Its also the only programme I've ever liked with Chris Tarrant in . The Hee-Heeing Blonde One led a team of comics which included Lenny ( ' This Is Trevor McDoughnut ' ) Henry , John Gorman ( of ' The Scaffold ' ) and Bob ( Spit The Dog ) Carolgees . Sally James ( she of the ' almost legendary pop interviews ' ) was devastatingly sexy , even to us kids . ' Tiswas ' was like a children's tea party had been invaded by fifth-form students weened on Spike Milligan . Its anarchic sense of humour was refreshing . Everyone involved seemed to be having a good time . Must have been something in those condensed milk sandwiches . . . One of the funniest moments was when Chris and co . made Lenny the subject of a ' This Is Your Life ' spoof . They even managed to get his mother into the studio ! Tarrant and the gang eventually quit ' Tiswas ' to do an ' adult ' version - ' O . T . T . ' . Only Sally James stayed behind . She was wise to do so because ' O . T . T . ' was the P . I . T . T . S . Naked men dancing with balloons and Bob Carolgees saying ' s - - t ' . It managed to be childish in a way ' Tiswas ' simply was not . Many shows have tried to copy ' Tiswas ' over the years , but none have come close . Now , if you'll excuse me , there's a postcard I simply must walk through . . . |
401,143 | 7,743,887 | 675,791 | 8 | Sister Maureen ? | 5C are thrilled to learn that Bobby Charlton is coming to the school . All except for Maureen , that is . Dismayed at Mr . Hedges ' impending marriage to Penny , she plans on becoming a nun . After Sharon spots her entering a convent with a suitcase , Mr . Hedges goes to see Monsignor Sopwith , to try and persuade him to talk Maureen out of making a hasty decision . . . When the cast of ' Please Sir ! ' were reunited in 1985 as part of I . T . V . ' s ' T . V . Weekly ' , the late Liz Gebhardt remarked on her physical resemblance to a stick insect . I always thought she looked remarkably frail . Indeed one of her later roles was as an anorexic in the A . T . V . daytime soap ' General Hospital ' . I'm sure this episode must have been among her favourites , it gives her a bit more to do than just weep . As it turns out , Maureen was only going to the convent to donate old clothes to charity . Roland MacLeod , who plays the ' Monsignor ' , was a familiar face to viewers through roles in such series as ' Marty ' , ' The Goodies ' and ' The Fall & Rise Of Reginald Perrin ' . His best scene is when he turns up at the school , as a last-minute replacement for Bobby Charlton , and proceeds to win the class over . Funniest moment - Potter attempting to teach 5C boys about car maintenance , using Mr . Cromwell's car as a guinea pig . Unfortunately , after removing the water pump , he finds he does not know how to replace it ! Spot The Mistake - When Maureen takes a collection tin into the staff room , she addresses Smithy as ' Mr . Price ' ! |
400,979 | 7,743,887 | 675,785 | 8 | Who Were You With Last Night ? | Following a wild party , Mr . Hedges wakes up half-naked in a strange bed , and with a dreadful hang-over . He is in for a shock - the bed belongs to Connie Eversleigh , mother of Sharon . Hedges manages to get to Fenn Street School , but spends the day in a terrible state , unable to focus on the lessons . Some time later , he overhears Sharon telling Maureen her mother is ' in the club again ' . Assuming the worst , he prepares to take responsibility by proposing marriage . . . The late Diana Coupland guests here as Sharon's good-time girl of a mother ' Connie ' ; two years later , she would be cast as ' Jean Abbott ' ( no relation to Frankie ! ) in that delightful Sid James sitcom ' Bless This House ' . Subsequent appearances by Mrs . Eversleigh in ' The Fenn Street Gang ' necessitated a spot of recasting - the role went to Barbara Keogh . Its thanks to Hedges ' innate decency that there is a plot here at all , most men would cheerfully turn their backs on the situation . Anyway , its all resolved happily at the end , with Connie revealing that the only club she is is the Christmas club . Funniest moment - to alleviate the hang-over , Hedges is given tinted owl-like glasses - and for a moment is transformed into Elton John ! |
401,298 | 7,743,887 | 205,654 | 8 | I'm legless and I'm helpless , hysterical and breathless . . . | This programme makes me wish I'd never paid my licence fee ! said one disgruntled viewer when this was first transmitted . Made by the same team behind ' A Kick Up The Eighties ' ; ' Laugh ? ' gave Robbie Coltrane one of his first series . Amongst the characters he played were smarmy quiz master ' Ted Todgers ' ( host of ' Lucky Bastards ' ) , the Orangeman ' Mason Boyne ' , the leader of an alien race ( the Nimmons ) out to conquer Earth , and an Edgar Lustgarten-style criminologist . Another cast member , Louise Gold , had performed on ' The Muppet Show ' and would go on to play ' The Queen ' in ' Spitting Image ' . Amongst the sketches were ' The Master Of Dundreich ' , a film serial spoofing Robert Louis Stephenson's ' The Master Of Ballantrae ' , while in ' Blue Movie Buff Of The Year ' contestants were tested on their knowledge of soft porn films . ' Laugh ? ' was not well received , and has been virtually forgotten . However , it paved the way for the more successful ' Naked Video ' . Elaine C . Smith appeared briefly in one episode . |
401,231 | 7,743,887 | 909,868 | 8 | I thought the moon was on fire ! | ' Chalk & Cheese ' was a Thames sitcom that reunited ' Some Mothers Do Ave Em ' producer Michael Mills with its star Michael Crawford . It was penned by Alex Shearer , whose other credits include the Peter Davison show ' Sink Or Swim ' and ' No Job For A Lady ' starring Penelope Keith , and which grew out of a one-off pilot - ' Spasms ' - shown on / 77 . Robin Hawdon played ' Roger Scott ' , young and upwardly mobile ( now there's an expression you do not hear used much these days ) with Jonathan Pryce as ' Dave Finn ' , a loudmouthed hippie . The two men meet in a hospital maternity ward , where their wives are due to give birth . They compare their respective views on everything under the sun , and unsurprisingly have little common ground . Thames decided to make ' Spasms ' into a series , but when Pryce refused to return , offered the role to Michael Crawford . Sporting a mop of curly hair and a beard , and with an annoying habit of constantly chewing gum , Crawford's ' Finn ' was worlds away from Frank Spencer . The opening titles were done in the same format as ' Some Mothers ' - with the credits inside a little yellow strip running along the bottom of the screen . The first episode restaged ' Spasms ' ( ' do not worry if you feel you have seen ' Chalk & Cheese ' before ' said ' The People ' newspaper , ' you probably have ! ' ) . The next had Finn moving in next door to Scott ( one of those great coincidences that you only ever find in sitcoms ) . They could have called the show ' Love Thy Neighbour ' had not the title been used already . ' Sit Vac ' was the third to be broadcast . Scott is interviewing applicants for a top job , and is amazed when Finn - wearing what looks like an old wedding suit and carrying a bag-full of dirty magazines - turns up and seriously expects to get it on account of him being Scott's neighbour . Roger tries to tell Finn what the job involves , and indulges in a bit of play acting with him pretending to be a salesman and Finn a potential customer ( fans of ' Some Mothers ' will recall a similar incident in the very first episode ) . Miss Foster , Scott's sexy secretary ( Judy Buxton ) has her bottom groped by Finn - and she does not appear to notice , let alone mind ! When Roger loses his temper , Finn storms off . A noticeably calmer Roger turns up at Finn's house later that day - the living room is decked out with cardboard cut-outs of ' Batman ' and ' Superman ' and photos of Brian Clough - and offers him the job of driver . No sooner has Finn been given responsibility than he proceeds to abuse it by smothering his car in decals of the ' Dave Loves Rose ' variety . The episode ends with Finn taking Roger to the airport and , pressed for time , drives like a maniac . The police give chase . The dialogue is good , and both Hawdon and Crawford are excellent , although the situations by which the two men came together week after week were fairly contrived ( such as their wives simultaneously throwing them out of their homes one night after an argument ) . ' Finn ' is a stereotypical working-class character , being lazy , opinionated , and slovenly , but Crawford somehow makes him likable . Funniest moment - Finn asks Roger if he wants milk in his tea . Then , grabbing a baby's bottle , he squirts the contents into the man's cup ! Viewers were not keen on seeing Crawford playing a comedy character so different to Frank Spencer and so the show was cancelled after one season . A pity because it had a lot of promise . |
401,008 | 7,743,887 | 30,824 | 8 | I had my mouth all set for apple pie ! | Stan and Ollie turn up in Switzerland , of all places . Stan thinks that they will be able to sell mouse traps to the Swiss because there are more mice there than anywhere else in the world . The owner of a cheese factory offers to buy their stock , but pays with counterfeit money . Thinking they are rich , Stan and Ollie celebrate with a slap-up meal at a local hotel . Then comes the crunch - they are unable to pay the bill . The hotel owner sets them to work as dishwashers . In no time at all , most of the crockery is broken . Also at the hotel is an American composer , trying to write a new musical . His wife shows up and , in an effort to make her husband notice her , pretends to flirt with Ollie . . . One of the weaker Laurel and Hardy features , this still manages to be a lot of fun . Stan and Ollie have some great scenes together , such as their drilling holes in the cheese factory's wooden floor , playing a tune by popping soap bubbles coming out of an organ , and Ollie serenading the Della Lind character . Switzerland as depicted here is peopled by blonde girls in pigtails , and yodelling men in leather shorts with feathers stuck in their hats , but who cares ? ' Bonnie Scotland ' was hardly an accurate depiction of that country either . Funniest moment - a close run between Stan's attempts to get a barrel of brandy from a St . Bernard's neck , or his and Ollie moving a piano across a rope bridge , where they encounter a gorilla ( don't ask ) . Did I hear someone say dated ? Well , Stan and Ollie never needed to swear or fart to get laughs , did they , unlike today's ' comics ' . Altogether , a pleasant viewing experience . |
400,648 | 7,743,887 | 337,780 | 8 | Before ' K . 9 . ' There Was ' K . T ' . | Mild-mannered inventor Robert Sommerby lives in the country with his Aunt Millie , and a number of robots , one of which - ' Katie ' ( K . T . ) - is silver , talks like one of ' The Gumbies ' from ' Monty Python ' , and keeps leaving his arm behind on buses . The others could pass for human , though , such as Eric ( who sometimes walks around with a bag of frozen peas against his head to stop him overheating ) and Desiree , programmed to breathlessly declare her undying love for every man she meets . A couple of sinister foreign types are out to get hold of Sommerby's robot blueprints , and try every means at their disposal to get into his house . Every week they fail , but like Wile E . Coyote they never give up . ' Robert's Robots ' was Bob Block's follow-up to the children's comedy ' Pardon My Genie ' , and was every bit as funny . Nigel Pegrum , who played ' Eric ' , was familiar to children through ' Sing To The Animals ' and a couple of guest appearances in ' The Tomorrow People ' . The comic possibilities of robots was later explored in ' Red Dwarf ' . |
401,306 | 7,743,887 | 641,198 | 8 | A Little Case Of Kidnapping | This Stanley Greenberg penned episode has a disturbing opening sequence in which a young boy playing alone in woods is kidnapped . McGill is hired by Hornsby ( Michael Goodliffe ) , an ambitious politician , to find the boy , Stephen . Hornsby's interest in the boy's disappearance baffles Mac . McGill's investigations are hampered by the surly locals . They resent his presence in the village and beat him up the first chance they get . To cut the story short , Stephen is Hornsby's illegitimate son . Some of the villagers have learnt this , and are attempting extortion . Unless Hornsby pays up , the boy dies . Michael Goodliffe was a talented actor who sadly took his own life in 1976 . His other credits include ' The Avengers ' and ' Callan ' , as well as the films ' 633 Squadron ' and ' The Man With The Golden Gun ' . Barbara Shelley , who plays his wife ' Dolores ' , is well known to Hammer film fans through her roles in ' Dracula Prince Of Darkness ' and ' Quatermass & The Pit ' . In a smaller role is the late Eric Thompson , writer and narrator of ' The Magic Roundabout ' children's show . This was director Herbert Wise's only foray into I . T . C . land , he later made the memorable ' I , Claudius ' for the B . B . C . . Another solid episode . I don't know where it was filmed but it looks like the location used in a later I . T . C . show - ' Shillingbury Tales ' . |
400,638 | 7,743,887 | 641,214 | 8 | The Lad Most Likely To Kill Himself ! | Richard Bradford cites this as ' Suitcase ' ' worst episode . He is of course entitled to his view , but it is not one that I share , even though it is basically a retread of ' Sweet Sue ' . Rodney Bewes , fresh from the hit B . B . C . sitcom sitcom ' The Likely Lads ' ( in which he played ' Bob Ferris ' ) , plays ' Tim Gormond ' , the psychologically disturbed son of a Lord ( Bill Owen ) . He is obsessed with the Albert Bridge in Chelsea and keeps going there to try to commit suicide by jumping from it . McGill is hired by Lord Gormond to bring him home following his latest attempt . Tim tells Mac he is suffering from a guilt complex as he believes he was instrumental in the death of his best friend Danny ( Michael Culver ) . Both men had climbed to the top of the bridge as part of a childish prank , and Danny had fallen . But Mac's investigations uncover an entirely different version of events , one centred around Danny's girlfriend Annabelle Fenchurch ( Jane Merrow ) with whom Tim was secretly in love with . . . Bewes acquits himself rather well in an unfamiliar serious role . According to Bradford , the actor climbed up the bridge himself , and he felt obligated to do the same . Bradford later learnt that there was no insurance , meaning that had he suffered an injury , no pay-outs would have been made . Robert Muller , the writer , was the husband of actress Billie Whitelaw . His story gives the impression of having been a left-over from A . B . C . ' s ' The Human Jungle ' , which starred Herbert Lom as psychiatrist ' Dr . Roger Corder ' . Mac does not try to psycho-analyse Tim , he gets to the truth by questioning his friends . Annabelle's father , Sir Walter ( Anthony Nicholls ) does not want to see his daughter charged with Danny's death ( she pushed him off the bridge after he publicly dumped her ) and hires thugs to warn Mac off the case by roughing him up in a garage forecourt . One is played by Christopher Coll , best remembered for his recurring role as ' Victor Pendlebury ' ( boyfriend of Thelma Barlow's ' Mavis Riley ' ) in ' Coronation Street ' . Quite a few of the cast went on to success in shows a few years later ; Bewes starring in the Thames sitcom ' Dear Mother Love Albert ' before returning to the role of Bob Ferris in ' Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads ' , Bill Owen took on the part of ' Compo ' in the long-running ' Last Of The Summer Wine ' in 1973 , Anthony Nicholls was NEMESIS boss ' Tremayne ' in I . T . C . ' s ' The Champions ' , and Simon Williams ( who plays nightclub owner ' Lestrange ' ) was ' Captain James Bellamy ' in L . W . T . ' s hit period drama ' Upstairs , Downstairs ' in 1971 . An uncredited Robert Urquhart makes one of two ( the other was in ' Day Of Execution ' ) appearances as ' Jarvis ' , a boozy but knowledgeable Fleet Street hack , a sort of one-man Wikipedia ! Good location filming on the Albert Bridge , combined with a decent cast , make this an interesting episode , though the flashback to Danny's actual death ( " Annabelle loves Danny ! Annabelle loves Danny ! Danny does not love Annabelle ! " ) is cringe making . I reckon anyone stupid enough to talk like that from the top of a bridge deserved to drown . One last comment - was there anyone in London at that time who did not know that McGill was kicked out of American Intelligence ? |
400,757 | 7,743,887 | 555,203 | 8 | Dawson Gets Plastered ! | It had to happen . Les is in hospital after his motorbike - which he calls ' Gladys ' - collides with a car . After the doctor ( Richard Morant ) and the stretcher bearer ( Gordon Rollings ) argue over the diagnosis , Les ' leg is encased in plaster and he is given a bed . He saved from the ordeal of having to listen to ' The Archers ' by the arrival of Roy , over friendly as ever , bearing fruit and nuts ( having been a health visitor and a coal miner in earlier episodes , here he is a male nurse ) . Roy makes no secret of his attraction to Les , and admits to having helped him out by donating a pint of blood . Les is horrified . . . It has been interesting to compare this show with ' The Galton & Simpson Playhouse ' , also released recently on D . V . D . The two are quite different . The latter being somewhat genteel , particularly with episodes such as ' Cheers ' . ' Weekly ' , on the other hand , is bawdier , boasting gay jokes of the sort no-one would dare make now . But when you have Dawson and Barrowclough together , it is impossible to find the material offensive . Richard Morant , who plays ' The Doctor ' , was ' Flashman ' in the excellent 1971 B . B . C . version of ' Tom Brown's Schooldays ' . I once got a charming message from Justin Rollings , son of the late Gordon , after I'd praised his father's work on another forum . Gordon Rollings is probably best remembered as ' Arkwright ' from the old John Smiths Beer adverts , but he appeared in countless films / T . V . shows of the ' 60's and ' 70's . That wonderful hangdog face brightened up everything he was in . Neil McCarthy is also no longer with us , but I fondly remember him as ' Mr . Bedford ' in an early episode of ' Some Mothers Do Ave Em ' . Georgina Moon , the sexy nurse , was ' Erotica ' in Frankie Howerd's ' Up Pompeii ! ' . Funniest moment - Les enjoying a friendly conversation with the man in the next bed . Then he finds out it is the same bloke who caused the accident that led to him being in hospital ! |
400,634 | 7,743,887 | 641,210 | 8 | I want to see me daughter ! | Millionaire Chester Farson ( Gordon Gostelow ) dies from heart failure . Eldest son Gerald ( Terance Alexander ) keeps news of his death a secret , hiring Gray to impersonate the old man to avoid paying death duties to the Government . He neglects to tell sister Jane ( Justine Lord ) about the deception , instructing his servants to keep her away from the family home in case she unmasks the fake . Jane spots one of her father's priceless paintings - ' Property Of A Gentleman ' - up for auction in London , and denounces it as stolen property . She brings in McGill to investigate . Breaking into the Farson home , Mac finds Gray , a drunken Shakespearian actor , beginning to live the part . As the plot unravels , Mac is bribed to keep his mouth shut . But will he ? Wilfred Greatorex wrote this , although his name is missing from the credits . Presumably he was unhappy with the way it turned out . It is a decent enough story , based on an entirely believable premise . With Inheritance Tax having recently been made into a hot political issue by the Tories ( inspired by its scrapping in America by the thankfully-gone Bush administration ) , it is interesting to see that even in 1967 the rich considered the paying of ' death duties ' ( as it was then called ) to be grossly unfair . They firmly believe that the tax burden should be placed on those at the lower end of the social scale , and that the law should be toughened for those convicted of minor social security fraud . As ' George Malone ' ( Peter Kerrigan ) observed in Alan Bleasdale's ' The Black Stuff ' : " Stealing is only thought bad when you take a little from some , instead of a lot from many . " . The main weaknesses are the casting of Justine Lord and Gordon Gostelow . Lord's role looks as if it was written for Sylvia Syms . She is miscast as an English rose ( though looks stunning in some groovy ' 60's fashions ) . Gostelow , on the other hand , is delightfully eccentric as ' Gray ' ( he was dubbed for his brief role as ' Farson ' ) but there's a bit too much of him . The episode at times takes on a lunatic air reminiscent of ' The Avengers ' . Frank Gatliff as an ' auctioneer ' and Derek Francis ' ' doctor ' provide welcome support . However , this is not one of the series ' more successful episodes . |
401,252 | 7,743,887 | 555,207 | 8 | Which way is this train going ? | The final episode of ' Dawsons Weekly ' sees Les boarding a sleeper train to Scotland , equipped with skis . He asks the attendant ( Kenny Lynch ) where he can find ' crumpet ' . Alone in the dining car , he is approached by a mysterious , beautiful woman ( Sue Lloyd ) who , not to put too fine a point on it , offers him a good time . Les thinks his birthday has come early . But there is a problem - she is travelling with an elderly companion . She eventually knocks out her out with a sleeping draught . Back in his cabin , Les prepares for the night of his life . Stripping to his long johns , he puts on his leather jacket . Answering a knock on the door , he is horrified to find not the girl but a man ( Roy Barrowclough ) who got on at Darlington , and wishes to share the cabin . The man is openly gay , and clearly attracted to Les . . . The final episode of ' Dawsons Weekly ' is a little belter ; the prospect of sex gives Les full opportunity to indulge in his penchant for gurning , which he employed when in his ' Cosmo Smallpiece ' persona . Interestingly , he never thinks to ask the name of the girl he intends to sleep with . Clearly no gentleman ! Edward Sinclair , who plays ' The Steward ' is , of course , immortalized in comedy history as ' The Verger ' from ' Dad's Army ' , while Kenny Lynch , a . k . a . ' The Attendent ' , popped up a lot on Jimmy Tarbuck's shows . Though a ratings success , the show was savaged by the critics to such an extent Yorkshire Television decided not to recommission it ( critics had a lot more influence in those days ) . One wonders if the poor reviews were motivated solely by anger on the part on those still grieving for Tony Hancock . While no classic , I found myself laughing out loud far more than I have done with some of Les ' other stuff , such as ' The Dawson Watch ' . The scene where Les meets Roy is reminiscent of ' The Alpine Holiday ' from ' Hancock's Half-Hour ' in which Tony checks into a hotel and finds himself lumbered with Kenneth Williams ' ' Snide ' . Les returned to ' Sez Les ' , and later moved to the B . B . C . where he eventually replaced Terry Wogan as host of ' Blankety Blank ' . Funniest moment - Roy telling Les he has traced back his ancestry and discovered he has Scottish roots . " I'm a Gordon ! " . Les sneers : " One of the gay ones , no doubt ! " . |
400,789 | 7,743,887 | 555,206 | 8 | I've been shot ! | Les is fed up with being so skint he can only afford to eat Baked Beans ( and having to eat them cold as he cannot pay his fuel bills ) so he changes his agent . He turns up at the agency wearing ridiculously flamboyant clothes , but the only acting job he gets offered is at the Giggleswick Repertory Company . It consists of one line : " I've been shot ! " . Les complains , only to be told by the play's camp director ( Julian Orchard ) that he can either take it or leave it . Eager to make some money , Les takes it . But then the play is changed and no-one bothers to inform him . . . Slightly similar to the ' Steptoe & Son ' classic ' A Star Is Born ' , this episode sees Les ' Hancockian pretensions coming to the fore . Great supporting cast - Julian Orchard , Josephine Tewson ( am I the only living man on Earth to find her sexy ? ) , Damaris Hayman , Bernard Spear as an agent loosely based on Bernard Delfont , and Tony Sympson ( who you may remember as Reggie Perrin's ' Uncle Percy Spillinger ' ) . Les had a long way to go before approaching Hancock as a comedy actor though ; he shouts a bit too often for my liking , but that probably would have changed over time . No Roy Barrowclough alas , instead long-faced Julian Orchard provides the campery . Note Les ' line about agents : " Perhaps I should have gone with Beryl ! " - a reference to the great Beryl Vertue , showbiz agent later turned television producer . Funniest moment - Les going on stage in black make-up and wearing a grass skirt , only to find the entire cast dressed in Victorian period costume ! |
401,577 | 7,743,887 | 500,258 | 8 | There's Something Suspicious About A Man Who Keeps His Booze Under Lock & Key ! | The negative response to the new B . B . C . series ' Ashes To Ashes ' ( good , but not a patch on ' Life On Mars ' ) has revived in this reviewer memories of when the fourth series of the sci-fi drama ' Blake's 7 ' aired . Like ' A . T . A . ' , Year 4 was initially met with hostility from fans . It was the first to lack involvement from its creator , Terry Nation , and a new producer - Vere Lorrimer - replaced David Maloney , who had left to produce a well-regarded adaptation of ' The Day Of The Triffids ' . The climax of the previous year necessitated the need for change , with ' Liberator ' gone , a ship had to be found for Avon and his crew . Also , Jan Chappell left , which meant ' Cally ' had to be written out , and a new crew member - ' Soolin ' - substituted . Dudley Simpson's closing theme was rearranged , and some impressive new titles by Douglas Burd ( including a new logo ) appeared . Over the course of three series , ' Blake's 7 ' had established a loyal fan base , and a regular audience in the region of ten million viewers ( achieved despite it often going out in opposition to ' Coronation Street ' ) . The net result of all these changes occurring simultaneously was to cause offence , and soon the letters pages of ' The Radio Times ' teemed with protests . One reader likened ' Scorpio ' to an ' animated door wedge ' , while another missed the ' subtle interplays of characterisation ' from the earlier series . ' Rescue ' begins where ' Terminal ' left off , with Avon and co . marooned on the artificial planet of the same name . Servalan has left a couple of booby-traps for them to fall into ; one of which kills Cally . Recovering very quickly from her demise , they face further perils from hostile snake-like creatures . Just when it appears they are doomed , a mysterious stranger named Dorian saves them . Dorian is a kind of intergalactic scrap dealer . The ungrateful Avon takes control of his ship , only to find it is on a pre-programmed flight course to Xenon . The only other person in Dorian's life is the beautiful but enigmatic Soolin . Searching the underground base , Dayna discovers a secret room inhabited by a hideous alien . The first twenty-five minutes of ' Rescue ' are indeed tremendous ; neatly dovetailing into the end of ' Terminal ' , it crackles along with great dialogue and some decent action scenes ( one thing ' Blake's 7 ' excelled at was explosions ! ) , but as soon as we get to Xenon we are plunged into a bland sci-fi remake of Oscar Wilde's ' The Picture Of Dorian Gray ' . ' Dr . Who ' fans who complained about Russell T . Davies paying homage to ' The Poseidon Adventure ' in ' Voyage Of The Damned ' need to realise that he was not the first writer on a sci-fi show to plunder the past in search of inspiration . The late Geoffrey Burridge gives a wonderful performance as ' Dorian ' , charming and sinister by turns , and you almost wish he'd been made a regular . Sadly , he died six years after this was made . The stunningly beautiful Glynis Barber does not get to make much of a debut , and would be severely underused for much of the early part of this season . Overall , a fair start to what turned out to Blake's final run . Incidentally , it went out in 1981 , the very year in which ' Ashes To Ashes ' is set . |
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