A quaint
episode this week in which Garden and Oddie experiment with seeing how far they
can pull Doctor In The House in the direction of black comedy.
Even by thrown-together seventies ITV sitcom standards, the mechanisms by which this episode sets things up are irritatingly implausible. Collier is still prepared to buy an old banger that he was told about from a man in a pub for £30 once he discovers that its a hearse, which he then just happens to absent-mindedly park outside the hospital mortuary. He then picks up his friends at the hospital to drive to a rugby match in Cambridge. Its easy enough to accept that a corpse would then get mistakenly loaded onto the hearse, but bewildering that when Upton and Waring notice that there's a coffin on board they deliberately decide not to tell Collier.
Once the students get on the road things perk up considerably over a long stretch of 16mm location filming of country b roads and deserted woodlands. Once he realises there's a corpse on board, Collier starts speeding back to the mortuary. The police give chase and Upton and Wearing take the coffin away and hide in the woods.
Being stranded in the middle of nowhere with a dead body is a scenario of doubtful comic potential, but considerable dramatically interest. The filmed environment lives up to the strangeness of the situation. Serendipitously, there's still winter snow on the ground and there's the most unsitcommy overhead shot of the two young men carrying the coffin, filmed through the gap at the top of an iron church gate. If you started the episode a third of the way in and got rid of the laugh track, for a few minutes it could be a The Frighteners story.
Even by thrown-together seventies ITV sitcom standards, the mechanisms by which this episode sets things up are irritatingly implausible. Collier is still prepared to buy an old banger that he was told about from a man in a pub for £30 once he discovers that its a hearse, which he then just happens to absent-mindedly park outside the hospital mortuary. He then picks up his friends at the hospital to drive to a rugby match in Cambridge. Its easy enough to accept that a corpse would then get mistakenly loaded onto the hearse, but bewildering that when Upton and Waring notice that there's a coffin on board they deliberately decide not to tell Collier.
Once the students get on the road things perk up considerably over a long stretch of 16mm location filming of country b roads and deserted woodlands. Once he realises there's a corpse on board, Collier starts speeding back to the mortuary. The police give chase and Upton and Wearing take the coffin away and hide in the woods.
Being stranded in the middle of nowhere with a dead body is a scenario of doubtful comic potential, but considerable dramatically interest. The filmed environment lives up to the strangeness of the situation. Serendipitously, there's still winter snow on the ground and there's the most unsitcommy overhead shot of the two young men carrying the coffin, filmed through the gap at the top of an iron church gate. If you started the episode a third of the way in and got rid of the laugh track, for a few minutes it could be a The Frighteners story.
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