There's an interesting overlaying of two
comedic forms in this Garden & Oddie script, both of which stem from the
same initial catalysing situation of Upton having to be at an interview for a
well-paid Harley Street job at very short notice.
One strand is classic farce, where humiliating circumstances take characters out of their control, eventually reducing them to a helpless state. Having three doctors needing to share two suits between them (Collier borrows Upton's for a date an an exclusive restaurant, Upton borrows Stuart Clarke's for the Harley Street interview) works well as a funny mechanism, because as long as it goes on it means that one of them will always going to have to be at a disadvantage, while another will be in ill-fitting clothes.
There's also an interesting dialectical strain not always apparent in these shows, with the Harley Street work (which pays £60 a week) leading characters to ask questions about the meaning and value of work as a doctor. The expensive practice is shown to be something of a sham, a place where rich hypochondriacs go to be indulged, experience butler service and pay a fortune for the experience.
Dr Whiteland (the head of this practice) is set up as a haughty battle-axe, but something isn't quite right about the way that she's played for that. Initially I thought that it was because the role had been rather ambitiously over-cast (played by Fabia Drake, b. 1904, and who had certainly enjoyed a remarkable career). But eventually it becomes clear in the final scene that Fabia Drake's considerable charm and dignity is deliberate, as Dr Whiteland takes the jejune Upton to her office and gently explains how she uses the private practice to fund her NHS work with the genuinely needy. Its a relatively long and articulate speech for such a programme, and when combined with the circumstances that have brought her to explain herself (Collier gate-crashing the practice by disguising himself as a tramp and bringing along a scrofulous family in need of consultation with him) it shows how prevalent the influence of George Bernard Shaw remained for generations of writers - even on production-line ITV sitcoms - providing a workable template for how to investigate power in dramatic form.
One strand is classic farce, where humiliating circumstances take characters out of their control, eventually reducing them to a helpless state. Having three doctors needing to share two suits between them (Collier borrows Upton's for a date an an exclusive restaurant, Upton borrows Stuart Clarke's for the Harley Street interview) works well as a funny mechanism, because as long as it goes on it means that one of them will always going to have to be at a disadvantage, while another will be in ill-fitting clothes.
There's also an interesting dialectical strain not always apparent in these shows, with the Harley Street work (which pays £60 a week) leading characters to ask questions about the meaning and value of work as a doctor. The expensive practice is shown to be something of a sham, a place where rich hypochondriacs go to be indulged, experience butler service and pay a fortune for the experience.
Dr Whiteland (the head of this practice) is set up as a haughty battle-axe, but something isn't quite right about the way that she's played for that. Initially I thought that it was because the role had been rather ambitiously over-cast (played by Fabia Drake, b. 1904, and who had certainly enjoyed a remarkable career). But eventually it becomes clear in the final scene that Fabia Drake's considerable charm and dignity is deliberate, as Dr Whiteland takes the jejune Upton to her office and gently explains how she uses the private practice to fund her NHS work with the genuinely needy. Its a relatively long and articulate speech for such a programme, and when combined with the circumstances that have brought her to explain herself (Collier gate-crashing the practice by disguising himself as a tramp and bringing along a scrofulous family in need of consultation with him) it shows how prevalent the influence of George Bernard Shaw remained for generations of writers - even on production-line ITV sitcoms - providing a workable template for how to investigate power in dramatic form.
No comments:
Post a Comment