This is a star vehicle where the stars' performance skills and personae do rather more of the comic work than the script. For no very good reason Peggy Mount's character starts the episode in a patriotic fervour, draped in a Union Jack and hanging a huge portrait of Churchill. Naturally, a funny foreigner (that regrettable sitcom staple) then visits the retirement home and Uncle Klaus from Dusseldorf causes disruption that manages to be simultaneously wholly predictable and largely inexplicable. Despite not having any discernable personality beyond comic mispronunciation, he's apparently a very eligible man and comes between Flora and Cissie's friendship (without much in the way of a scene to show why this might be).
Its just as well that Peggy Mount is in this, as most of the humour derives from getting her to do things that might hopefully be funny, rather than organically arising from the character or situation - Let's dress Peggy in a WWII siren suit! Let's put her up a stepladder! Let's put her in a evening dress! As it happens, these moments do raise a smile, but only because of her and what the viewer has emotionally invested in the performer.
To a modern eye, most of these women look about ten years too young to be in a retirement home.
No comments:
Post a Comment