Change Your Image
nick_wilson_iow
Reviews
The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club: Coach Trip to Blackpool (1974)
Bernard's on the booze and being a *^£%^$!&
Being the first format-breaker for TWASSC, the show goes on the road the Blackpool, and takes up residence at the Layton Institute. Cue plenty of gags about the Tower!
The acts are the same mix of variety-show wh*res, then-current singers and twilight-era stars, but with a bigger audience to play to. Shep's Banjo Boys were a staple of 70s TV shows (even stretching in the 80s) and do their stuff, even going double-time when Manning tells them to hurry up and get off.
The very cute Stephanie De Sykes (and her almost superfluous backing singers, Rain) put on a great performance of her top-10 hit "Born With a Smile on my Face", and a number of brown-ale crowd watching clearly have their eyes on more than just the dagger-like collars on her blouse
The biggest shock comes in the form of an impressionist whom isn't painful to watch! I'll go one better - Dave Evans pulls a really entertaining turn out of the bag, with excellent impressions of Eric Morecambe, Groucho Marx and, surprisingly, Acker Bilk. OK, I'd heard a couple of the gags before, but they were done with real energy. It's hardly surprising that that same manic intensity transferred to his son, Lee Evans.
Things hit a wall with the arrival of Johnny Hackett, with a familiar blend of half-hearted audience participation and playing to the back row. Having seen him on a few episodes of The Good Old Days, I knew what to expect, and let's just politely leave things with "he didn't disappoint".
Much better was former Eurovision contender Malcolm Roberts, who belts out an agreeable rendition of the classic "She", before buggering off far too soon to make way for The Kaye Sisters, who's clear disparity in looks and ages make it abundantly obvious that they are siblings in showbiz name only. Along way from their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, they hadn't released a single for almost ten years, treading water since their heyday in the 50s/early 60s. Their act wasn't old enough to be considered nostalgic by that point, just profoundly dated.
Now onto the aspect which really puts the mockers on the whole thing. Manning had becoming less professional as the show went on, with the intake of alcohol clearly the catalyst. He would insult bands like The Crickets before they came on (suggesting that they he had no say in the acts appearing, and wouldn't have had them if it were his choice - many a truth, etc...) and heckle acts with to the point where it genuinely disrupted their flow. OK, Colin Crompton regularly did so, but it was all both in fun and in character, and clearly pre-arranged it with some of the performers. Here, Manning is clearly one-over-the-eight, as his heckles have some real venom to them. When introducing De Sykes, he forgets the name, and quickly glances round to read it off of his notes. He does so again later, but for comedic effect and (presumably) play down that he earlier forgot one of the names.
Worst of all is when Crompton takes the stage, and Manning gets him hands of the club fire-bell. Although fellow "Comedians" veteran Crompton is clearly used to appearing on stage as a stand-up, he's taken right out of his comfort zone with a George Formby impression as he performs "With My Little Stick Of Blackpool Rock". He's unquestionably nervous, and not helped by Manning constantly ringing the bell and aiming vitriolic zingers at him. You can see the confidence draining out of him, and he's clearly very upset that Manning is tearing him down and trashing his act. OK, comedians are supposed to be hardened against insults, but his eyes and facial quivering tell another story. Manning and Crompton famously had an antagonistic relationship, and it seems that this was the opportunity Manning had been waiting for.
It all ends with a sing-a-long of "Show Me The Way To Go Home", which might have closed it on a belter, but with Manning changing the delivery, there was no chance. As a matter of fact, the curtain-call echoed the traditional closer to an episode of The Good Old Days, with its perennial rendition of "Down At The Old Bull & Bush"
The bookending photos of Manning and Crompton taking in the sites of Blackpool are fun, although they seem a little forced - you wonder if the pictures were taken before or after taping the show....
Bless This House: The Naked Paperhanger (1976)
Bless this house, for it has sinned...
As an indicator of where Bless This House was during its final series, The Naked Paperhanger is a pretty good look at just how far it had fallen. The freshness of the earlier episodes, which had a wholehearted approval of Sid James, had long since gone, succumbing to the same combination of success-fuelled lethargy and apathy which turned On The Buses from initial mediocrity to utterly dreadful.
Prolific comedy scribe Dave Freeman had contributed to the writing of it at various stages, but times were changing around him. For a show about the generation gap, it had morphed into caricatures and archetypes, with the emphasis of how much Sid Abbot could be wound up before he inevitably blew his top. Sid was in ill-health, putting in only what was required, and his lack of enthusiasm really shows. Sally Geeson was now 26, playing the same bubble-headed 16 year old in a much more mature body, sapping away at the last shreds of credibility. Although Mike had moved out, efforts made to keep him part of the family unit became increasingly ridiculous, including attempts to have him move back home, as though it would restore to show to its glory days. The whole thing was on autopilot, existing only to give Sid James money to blow on gambling.
Freeman raids a key part of his script for Carry On Behind (written the same year) involving a mix-up between two very different kinds of "stripper", one which removes paint whilst the other takes off very different layers. Instead of it being the finale, it's bumped up to the status of premise, including the expected shot of Sid walking in on a nude woman and not knowing how to react - shown in classic side-boob style, of course. There's the ever-green "caught spying through a keyhole" gag, still just as fresh as it was in the 1920s. We get Sid and neighbour Trevor (Anthony Jackson, the excellent original star of Rentaghost, before it turned into a panto) pratting around on unwieldy instruments for music-hall style laughs. The mythical Aunt Alice is due to turn up, so the stakes are higher than a BBQ in Everest - even though she turns out have all the punctuality of "Godot".
Dave Freeman gave the Carry On series a shot in the arm with Carry On Behind, downplaying some of the more dated elements and even imbuing a bit of morality in there(!), and it's bizarre that it's the same guy who wrote the awful Carry On Columbus. Here, he was just slapping together expected elements with all the enthusiasm of an engineer oiling a money-printing machine.
Sid James died less than three months after the final episode went out. There would have probably been more, because as much as Sid loathed it, the money was giving him flexibility to line the pockets of bookies all over London. The Naked Paperhanger was indicative of how far Bless This House had fallen, and sad to see everyone strictly going through the motions on a show they were once proud of.
Catweazle: The Trickery Lantern (1970)
Aunt Flo visits and makes a right mess...
The first series of the beloved LWT show came to something of a curious conclusion, briefly set up by the end of the previous episode, where Catweazle discovered that water (or "wat-a") was the missing element needed to return him to his own time. Why it took him 11 episodes to work it out when he already knew of the other three is a matter for the writers. In any case, you would think that they'd pull out all the stops to give the show a satisfying finale and round off all the characters in appropriate fashion, but this wasn't the case.
One of the main problems with this episode is that the principle characters are now rather unlikable, as though written to be obnoxious enough to stop kids from being upset when the series ended. Carrot is now fed up with Catweazle, complete with an element of venom which wasn't there before and far from being his 'brother' in magic, to the point where he even tells Catweazle to stop calling him as such. Pompous Mr Bennet is bed-ridden, Sam is lacking in his usual charm and everyone's favourite magician has now become a thieving little pikey as well as utterly selfish and much less likable than usual.
The one bright spot is the belated extension of the Bennet family, with a lovely turn by Hilda ("fancy...") Braid as Auntie Flo, who turns at the farm and mistakes Catweazle for the ghost she saw there when she was a girl. Her interaction with Bayldon is utterly charming, and it's a real shame that she couldn't have been there from the start, giving the two leads someone else to bounce off of. Eileen Moore also scores as a visiting doctor, leading to hints of possible romance between the pompous land-owner and her healing touch.
The ending plays out a little longer than it should, with Carrot refusing to believe that Catweazle has the ability to do any real magic, much less be the century-spanning time-traveler he claimed to be - little odd, as he saw him use his skills to good effect in the previous episode! Still, as Catweazle begins to fade from the 20th century, Carrot watches in cold realisation that he'll never see him again, in spite of how he'd been treating him recently. It certainly doesn't end things on a joyous note that our temporal wanderer is returning home, but with a tone of melancholy that Carrot's summer holiday of wonder is over, and how a dull, middle-class existence only waits for him back at the farm for the rest of his days.
Paul Hogan's England (1983)
"G'day, viewers - how the devil are you...?"
When Channel 4 launched in the UK back in 1982, one of big shows that evening was The best of the Paul Hogan Show, proving to be a hit and - along with the Fosters adverts - turned him into a beloved figure. With interest in all things British re-ignited with the recent royal wedding, the time was right to bring Hoges back to the mother-country.
Old reliables such as Leo Wanka are given airtime purely because they're popular, without the material being particularly good this time around. Happily, he also brings over Harry Bottler (a dynamite parody of Australian naturalist Harry Butler) to take a look at some of the English wildlife, whilst Kung Fu's Caine & Mater Po are found to be supplementing their income via a Chinese restaurant in Soho. Arthur Dunger fares among the best out of his stock characters, stopping off in the UK as part of a "World Discovery Tour - see Europe in 2 ½ days", chatting to the audience and getting some pretty big laughs.
With plenty of location filming in London, including some outdoor activity with World Cup Executions, followed by a trip to the beach for a comedic look at UK lifeguards in action, but best of all is (unsurprisingly) when Hoges is in the studio, playing to a live audience. It's here that his natural charm and charisma comes into play, as well his amazing ability to get viewers on his side - that he comes armed with decent material to reel off makes things even better - one gag even found its way into Crocodile Dundee.
With the popularity of The Goodies in Australia, it came as little surprise that one of them turned up, with the most enthusiastic of the trio putting in an appearance. Yep, Tim Brooke-Taylor lends his talents to sketch where he's immigration applicant looking to make a new life Down-Under - the fact that this has more than a whiff of the controversial South Africa tourism piece in The Goodies, also goes a way to explaining why he's on board. Come to think of it, a sizeable chunk of the running time is taken up by interconnected sketches about unhappily emigrating, just like the infamous Goodies episode. It's rather ironic that Hoges jokes that the entire English population will have to wait their turn, given that moving to Australia was a common gag among British comedians up 'til that point.
It was also great to see stalwarts of British comedy taking part, including loveable Please Sir thug/Kipper frontman Peter Cleall and Ronnie Brody, whilst Delvene Delaney opts for a Busman's Holiday in the UK after putting in only sporadic appearances in The Paul Hogan Show by that point.
In truth, this was a variety show, as there were also top-flight musical acts appearing, including Dexy's Midnight Runners, Paul Young and Dire Straits, and I believe that these performances are missing from the (now elusive) DVD edition due to licensing problems.
Originally filmed as two parts, but often put together as one, this was the breath of fresh air Australian viewers had been waiting for, as the show had been coasting on its reputation for a while. It's charming, funny, and great to see Hoges doing his stuff in the northern hemisphere.
Spitting Image: Election Special (1987)
The special which swung the election...maybe.
Spitting Image was at the height of its popularity at the time, and - more importantly - at the peak of its political influence among its viewers. Britain was still reeling from the decimation of the unions brought about by two terms of Thatcher's leadership, and hostility towards the Tories was high. The "video nasties" hysteria had seen her through the 1983 election, but there was a real possibility of Neil Kinnock winning the vote. When a miracle was needed, along came Spitting Images' 1987 Election Special.
Not that it favoured any one party, as the show opened with a breaking news report claiming that the Conservatives had won, and that: "...the polls have now closed - soon to be followed by the rest of the hospitals, the schools and the BBC". The "special relationship" between Thatcher and Regan was memorably brought up, with a journalist asking the President his reaction to a possible Labour victory: "Well,if that happens, we - as Americans - would respond in the normal, responsible way to a democratic election in another country: we would send in the CIA to help round up all of the socialists and execute them inside a football stadium".
Even though there was no real bias, Kinnock came of worse and was the subject of some of the funniest skits, including the superb parody of Madness' "Driving in my Car", with the whole Labour gang extolling just how terrible they were as an electoral prospect. A sample of the lyrics: ""We're appalling, appalling, that's the thing people find so galling. Take us away, put us in a hearse - you think the government's bad? We'll be even worse!!"
Sharp and brilliantly insightful. This was Spitting Image at its best, and just before it started to slide. But it was one Hell of a finale to its best years.