Monday 22 April 2019

A Comedy On This Day: Wodehouse Playhouse - Feet Of Clay (23 April 1976)


 An Upstairs, Downstairs reunion in this episode, with Simon Williams joining Alderton and Collins in one of Wodehouse's golfing stories. As usual in Wodehouse adaptations you lose much of the prose style but keep the plot, making the experience pleasant to watch rather than harmonious to read. Along with some enjoyable star performances (especially Pauline Collins' dim aristocrat), this story's highlights come through atmospheric coastal location filming, and an ambitious attempt to show progress of the climactic golf match through cinematic montage and dissolves.

 Its very slightly jarring having a studio audience in a literary adaptation, even of a sunny-natured comic tale, as it doesn't share quite the same structure as sitcoms or sketches. Without conventional jokes or reversals of situations it feels like the laughter is a bit randomly distributed. Although it does create a cherishable moment when a Pekingese dog arrives and fetches the golf ball at the final hole, causing one excited audience member to exclaim, "How sweet!"

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