A Comedy On This Day: Q9 (1 July 1980)

 Q9 incorporates the studio audience into the programme quite a lot, giving us an insight into the sort of people who would go to a Spike Milligan studio recording forty years ago.

 They look like long-term followers of Milligan who know what sort of thing to expect, rather than speculative bookers, I think. It’s slightly unfortunate that they're aware of being recorded and are all looking up at the monitors. The worse the jokes that Milligan tells, the more enthusiastically they respond.

  Milligan's resident musical guest, Ed Welch, performs a Gilbert O'Sullivan-type song about things getting better. Something as composed and prepared as a non-funny song comes as a calming relief in the middle of half an hour of thrown-together material performed in a constant manic state, although perhaps Ed Welch doesn't exactly exude the polished charisma of an established musical star.

A Comedy On This Day: Doctor At Sea - Wolf In Ship's Clothing (30 June 1974)

 Moving Doctors Waring and Stuart-Clark's capers on-board was a counterproductive move, preventing them from moving out and about and interacting with the usual range of patients and colleagues. And how convenient that Professor Lomas' identical brother should turn out to be the Captain! It is fun to hear a 'Sailor's Hornpipe' arrangement of the Doctor theme, though, and the men look smart in their white uniforms.

 This week, Dr Waring ends up seeing three women simultaneously over one night - his jealous nurse girlfriend (Elizabeth Counsell), a rich young American passenger (Sandra Dickinson) and her blowsy mother (Patricia Hamilton). Nothing is especially funny, but it is fast-moving and skillfully performed and orchestrated, Robin Nedwell continually zipping between two bars, the mother's cabin, a discotheque and the bridge. The ship's disco is the most intriguing of these locations, with the dance floor behind bars and a clientele of unengaged non-speaking extras dancing to 'Mama Weer All Crazee Now' and 'Roll Away The Stone'.

A Comedy On This Day: Thick As Thieves - The Trouble With Tommy (29 June 1974)

 I've tried to watch this series more than once and have never got beyond three episodes... Seeing an episode 'blind' turns out to be a better way to experience the programme, as all of the alienating things about it (the unsatisfactory scenario, poorly-realised characterization, etc) don't seem to matter so much when you haven't got a whole series of the thing to get through. It’s closer to how the 1974 viewer would have experienced the programme, as a fleeting moment in the flow of a Saturday evening's viewing.

 The story is that familiar comedy staple, the regulars harbouring an escaped criminal. But the way that it's realised makes it look like (and also, to some extent, is performed like) a contemporaneous episode of New Scotland Yard, with a few neat directorial touches. We have to wait five minutes until we get a big close-up, at the dramatic moment when Bob Hoskins and John Thaw suggest that, "we could do another job". There's also an unsitcommy overhead show from the top of the staircase, looking down at Thaw and Pat Ashton, adding some tension when their house is raided as they harbour an escaped convict upstairs.

 Although it’s got a Mike Hugg theme tune and a shot of a derelict building in the credits, there aren't so many signifiers that you're watching a Clement and La Frenais script. But odd flashes of quality writing do flare up occasionally, especially in the descriptions of off-screen characters and events, and the evocation of the wider world it's set in. Such as Stan's explanation to George of how the area has changed since he's been away:

 Since you've been inside, there's been a social transformation in Fulham. Yeah, your essential working class cottages is fetching thirty thousand now. The yellow door brigade's moved in - ad men and newscasters with trendy wives and kids with names like Emma and Simon.

A Comedy On This Day: Sez Les (28 June 1974)

 John Cleese is still around, contributing to a few skits, the most interesting of which is a variant of the Monty Python argument sketch, with Dawson as an inveterate liar and Cleese testing the logic of the situation.

 By far the most impressive routine is a big wrestling set piece, with the usually invisible studio audience surrounding the ring and a surprising level of physical activity and risk for Dawson. Even though the comedy's target is the artificial violence and ritual of wrestling, once the routine involves Dawson crouching down while some big men repeatedly jump over him my reaction is to admire his nerves first, and to laugh as an afterthought.

 Musical entertainment comes from Kenny Ball & His Jazzmen, interpreting 'Cabaret'. They've gone multi-coloured since their many appearances on Morecambe & Wise and Arthur Haynes a decade earlier, with a much-hairier Ball resplendent in orange flares, rainbow shirt and navy and green check wide-lapel jacket.

 This week the Irving Davies Dancers accompany a performance of 'The Age of Aquarius' from Barbara Arnau. The men are topless, oiled and in white trousers and the women are dressed in bikinis and diaphanous white capes. The dancers emerge from under a carapace of ostrich feathers, initially in gyrating pairs, and then separate into concentric male and female circles. The men at one point raise the singer, who is wearing a gold chain bikini over a flesh-coloured catsuit. I think that the intended effect at the end of the song is for her to be submerged by the chorus of men, but rather unfortunately it looks as much like they are collectively groping her. 

A Comedy On This Day: Doctor At Large - With A Little Help From My Friends (27 June 1971)

 Dr Upton is temporarily put in charge of a surgery, and Dr Collier and Dr Stuart-Clark spoil things for him. Not every Doctor episode was written by a comedy luminary of their generation, and this one is by the uncelebrated Geoff Rowley & Andy Baker. Its a bit messy, with sources of intended comedy coming from several directions; a nosey cockney charlady, a bevy of teenage ravers (led by Shirley Cheriton); a pair of homosexuals in a pub responding with interest when the Doctors raise their voices; and a bewildering filmed insert with Christopher Timothy as a car salesman in a false moustache. Nothing really sticks, and it’s often annoying.

 Something more interesting happens in the second half when Upton sacks his two friends and appoints a new doctor by letter. And - guess what? Doctor Berrington turns out to be a woman! A young woman played by Tessa Wyatt. The permutations of this situation have a bit more potential that what went before, and its a shame that they don't get enough time to develop beyond Dr Upton getting flustered when he talks to her, mansplaining what the job entails, and complaining to his friends in the pub that she's too competent and trying to take over. It ends with a hint of romantic hopes expressed by Dr Upton. The best bit - because it doesn't have to try to be funny - happens under the credits, with the new Doctor tidying her surgery at the end of the working day and shutting the door. I'm pleased to see that Dr Berrington appears in a couple more episodes, so maybe her character will develop.

A Comedy On This Day: Doctor In The House - Doctor On The Box (26 June 1970)

 Another Garden and Oddie script, Garden even briefly appearing this week in a cameo as a television presenter. This week, the cameras of 'London Television' are filming a report about student life at St Swithins'. In the words of Professor Loftus: "Television, Upton - the cause of so many cases of myopia, bad posture, stagnation of the blood and premature senility!"

 This is an episode in which the set-up is slightly laborious - a succession of scenes of the students either behaving in a stilted manner as soon as the cameras start rolling, or being filmed behaving rowdily - but the pay-off (of the students watching themselves on the eventual televised report) is worth waiting for, rewarding the viewer with the novel experience of seeing what has already happened from a new perspective. Within the context of a Doctor sitcom, the report itself works in a different comic register, which requires a level of quick-witted televisual literacy on the part of the viewer to work out what's wrong about the sequencing and editing of how its been put together. Also relatively tricky to put together in the studio, I would have thought. Might this final scene, which requires an edited version of scenes from the recording to be assembled and fed through a monitor on the set, have been recorded at a later date?

A Comedy On This Day: Never Mind The Quality, Feel The Width - Blood Is Thinner Than Water (25 June 1970)

 You can tell what confidence Powell and Driver had in their narrative powers by the way that the entire first half of this episode is given over to one scene played in continuous time.

 It covers a multitude of changes of expectations and reversals of fortune - Manny's rich distant American cousin Lionel is coming to visit; Manny tells Patrick that he expects Lionel to expand the business with his funds; the flash Yankee cousin arrives and impresses the tailors; once Patrick is out of the room, Lionel tells Manny that he's lost his fortune and he expects him to fire Patrick and give him his job; Lionel goes, Patrick returns and Manny hasn't got the heart to fire his friend; Manny goes, Lionel returns and fires Patrick; Manny returns and Patrick is upset. Most comedy writers would have divided this story up into sections to create some ellipsis between the different stages, but it works rather well dramatically as a single scene.

 In the second act the two colleagues are (of course) reconciled in a crisis, both climbing out on a sixth floor ledge, each mistakenly believing that a reported suicide risk is their friend. The ensuing vertiginous peril is hardly Harold Lloyd's Safety Last!, but it is enhanced by canny use of quick cutaways to film inserts and Chroma key. Shots of traffic on the street below (also used as a backdrop) have a strange Toytown model-like quality. When I first looked at them, I couldn't be sure that they were even real, but they are, just shot from a further distance away than you're used to seeing. This onscreen vista has that same miniature quality that you get looking at cars and houses out of an aeroplane window just after take-off, and the disconcerting sense of distance adds visual credibility to a very cheaply-realised scene.

A Comedy On This Day: George & The Dragon - Table Manners (24 June 1967)

 A particularly loosely-structured episode this week, with not much happening in the first half until George and Gabrielle decide - on a whim and for no good reason - to start a 'battle of the sexes' contest, to determine who has the greater willpower by going without food for the longest.

 The highlight of the first act is a very simple, almost music hall, routine of Sid James and Keith Marsh doing the washing up. This works through the viewer following a disrupted right-to-left rhythm, with Marsh perpetually returning the same cleaned plate to the pile of dirty dishes, meaning that James never makes any progress. Although the first thing that you think of when someone mentions Sid James is his dirty laugh and a hangdog expression, when I watch him in these sitcoms I'm often struck by how physically nimble a performer he was. There's a lovely fastidious movement in the washing up routine when he is repeatedly about to hand the plate to Marsh but pauses and brings it back to scour again.

 Realisation of the competition is quite ambitious and sophisticated. Most of the second act is taken up with solo routines for the light-headed and food-fixated James and Mount in their bedrooms, complete with voice overs ("sausages... eggs... bacon") and visual mixes of their hungry faces superimposed over a mobile point-of-view shot of an imagined surreptitious visit to the kitchen and opening the fridge door. I was interested to see what was stored in the Maynard household's refrigerator - a cold roast chicken, a joint of beef, sausages, a gala pie and two packets of butter. The four of them get through a lot of meat!

A Comedy On This Day: Hancock - The Blood Donor (23 June 1961)

 As you might expect, I know this very well, but also hadn't seen it for about 20 years - very good conditions for enjoying something.

 Why was it this episode in particular that got remembered, I wonder? It's one of Galton and Simpson's very best scripts. The structure has a pleasing circularity to it, with the end leading back to the beginning in a way that feels natural, rather than forced - both surprising and fitting. The donor scenario and situation of the episode is genuinely original, rather than overly familiar. It’s very good on the absurd reasoning that we can produce in conversation when pressed on a subject that we don't really know about:

MAN: But I still don't see what good blood is, though
HANCOCK: Well... your body's full of veins, isn't it?
MAN: Yes.
HANCOCK: Well, you've got to fill then up with something, haven't you?
MAN: Ah yes, I see. Are you a doctor then?

 The whole 25 minutes is continually filled with very finely crafted elaborate lines - far too many for the viewer to remember after a single viewing, which accounts for its phenomenal subsequent success as an LP. But the thing that I'd forgotten which made me laugh and laugh this time round was a very simple illustration of the gap between Hancock's self-image as a generous man and the immediate limits of that generosity: "(to Hugh Lloyd) Do you like wine gums? Don't take the black one."

 Watching with the knowledge of Hancock's car accident before recording and that he's reading the dialogue off an autocue prompts two responses in me. You're really aware of how wrong the eye lines are, and how rarely Hancock looks at the person who he's talking to, giving the performance a rather glazed feel. But at the same time, his fluency with the dialogue is amazingly good. The emphasis and phrasing in some quite complicated and allusive speeches is almost invariably comically right - it couldn't be spoken in a different way without being less funny.

 With Hancock not really making eye contact with the other performers, it's fortunate that his supporting cast were such accomplished comic actors. June Whitfield, Frank Thornton and Patrick Cargill all have to respond to Hancock with a form of reserved exasperation, and each manages to convey a distinctive individual character with a life beyond a stooge reacting to a star performance. With none of their high-status characters able to humour Hancock's delusions, the viewer gets a sense of reward when Hugh Lloyd's modest and trusting fellow donor appears at the next bed when Hancock comes around after the transfusion. His naïve and accepting responses are also beautifully performed and draw out another side to the lead.

A Comedy On This Day: The Black Adder - Born To Be King (22 June 1983)

 Every time that I tried to watch the first series of Blackadder, from the original broadcast when I was ten to repeats in the nineties, I drew a blank with it. Still that was in a previous century and half a lifetime ago, so let's see if it appeals any more now...

 No, not much, I'm afraid. There's something particularly laboured and effortful about it. At this early stage Rowan Atkinson's very mannered squirming ninny performance feels like it works against what the character is trying to achieve in some scenes. That incidental music certainly doesn't help.

 The exterior scenes are much more to my taste, which feel quieter and to have more breathing space. At least you can notice and think about the horses, the sheep, the snow and what it might feel like to be in that place during these sequences, all of which put me in a more receptive frame of mind for such jokes as there are outdoors.

A Comedy On This Day: The Gaffer - There Goes The Bride (21 June 1983)

 Bill Maynard sounds worryingly out of breath in this episode, panting heavily in the middle of sentences - unless its an actor's device for conveying Graham White's dense dialogue!

 There's a fair amount of filmed inserts this week, something that I don't really associate with The Gaffer beyond the factory yard. A pub stag night starts off in the studio, but then oddly turns into a filmed montage sequence of an idyllic night's debauch for the regulars, downing yards of ale and leaching after barmaids, to a smoky saxophone soundtrack. The effect is peculiar, especially as there is no continuity of design between the two pub sets and a different barmaid on film.

 This is followed by the Gaffer driving through the Yorkshire countryside at the end of a freezing winter with melting snow on the ground, and a shot of the gaffer petting a border collie outside a farmhouse - a unique moment when we see him as a likeable character. None of these inserts are remotely funny, but the extra dimension of real-world conditions enhances the programme.

A Comedy On This Day: Citizen Smith - Prisoners (20 June 1980)

 This final series does feel rather exhausted, and as though it doesn't really seem to know what it’s about or why it exists anymore. There isn't much comedy derived from the small beer revolutionary movement this episode, with an extremely familiar storyline of escaped convicts taking shelter in the heroes' home.

 Naturally, the chief villain is a menacing angry Glaswegian, with a towering physique and scar, downing litres of whiskey neat from the bottle. The most engaging moments derive from Wolfie's attempts at showing an aggressive stance towards him:

WOLFIE: Are you deaf as well as ugly? You think you're tough don't you? Come down 'ere from the Mull of Kintyre with your Stepney boxing glove! Well, let me tell you something, sunshine. You're nothing, you're fourth division. We ain't scared of you mate. These boys look scared? Eh?

(Shot of two of the friends cowering behind cushions)

 This conflict doesn't end well for Wolfie, but at least it's created one of the series' better moments of his leadership abilities being put to the test.

A Comedy On This Day: Dawson's Weekly - Where There's A Will (19 June 1975)

 As a Yorkshire Television production, I think that these playlets were probably the only specifically Northern comedies that Galton & Simpson ever wrote. The opening scene - the familiar scenario of a solicitor reading a will to a party of grieving relatives - is cast like a J. B. Priestley play or Last of the Summer Wine, with the grasping mourners including such familiar North Country performers as Kathy Staff and Bert Palmer.

 The reading of wills is one of those inherently dramatic and suspenseful situations that its almost impossible not to make at least slightly entertaining, and the writers and actors certainly know what they're doing in this scene. Richard Vernon's Solicitor: "As for George and Arthur, my two brothers in law, I leave them-" (close-up of Bert Palmer and John Sharp's expectant faces - "Yes?") "- with great pleasure".

 Naturally, distant cousin Dawson inherits the lot, with the absurd proviso that he has to get married in a week. The second half of the story is much less sure-footed, enlivened by scenes between Dawson and Roy Barraclough (although what the joke is with Barraclough fluctuates rather irritatingly - sometimes its the perception of suspect homosexuality, and sometimes the man's hopelessness with women and Dawson projecting himself as a man of the world - the second option is much the more amusing).

A Comedy On This Day: Doctor In Charge - The Fox (18 June 1972)

 This Graham Chapman and Bernard McKenna episode mostly consists of the kind of hi-jinks that you expect to find in a routine Doctor episode - Doctors chasing nurses, fearsome matrons, practical jokes and the like. Searching for trace elements of Chapman preoccupations, there's a particularly absurd rustic patient who takes carrots and potatoes to bed and a rather sharply drawn retirement party for the drunken retiring matron.

 There's also lots of conflict. You don't generally see the students disliking each other in these series, but Richard O'Sullivan's priggish Bingham is shown to be actively unpopular with his peers - the one large close-up that we get is of him and another doctor squaring up to each other, eyeball-to-eyeball. Its one of a handful of thoughtfully-directed visual moments, along with an unexpected overhead shot of Dr Waring grappling with a nurse on a couch, and an understated close-up insight into Bingham - who has just closed a door on his fellows after an argument about his lack of interest in pursuing women - the camera lingering on his pensive face.

A Comedy On This Day: George & The Dragon - The Old Flame (17 June 1967)

 An old flame of Colonel Maynard's from thirty years ago returns to England from Australia, having accepted his proposal by post.

 This episode is a good example of a sitcom with modest ambitions that are achieved exceptionally well. Importantly, something of genuine significance is at stake over the 25 minutes, the Colonel's emotional well being and the servants' position. The guest role of the childhood sweetheart, Priscilla (Sonia Dresdel), isn't given much time to form a well-rounded character, but instead is realised as a creation of almost Dickensian cruelty, making impossible demands of the staff ("I don't bandy works with the working classes!") behind the Colonel's back.

 The chief reason for the success lies in the top-drawer casting. Unlike a lot of star vehicles, real thought and care has been given into giving the performers things to do that suit their talents, remain in character and have something emotionally real at stake. So the Colonel puts John Le Mesurier's crumpled suaveness to good use - looking dapper but anxious when awaiting the his lover's return, beautifully turned out but wearing odd shoes, charmingly gallant when she arrives, very politely vexed when he realises that he's made a terrible mistake. Sid James' chauffeur doesn't have so much to do this week, but what he's been given is well judged - rude enough not to curry favour with the viewer, but loyal enough to persuade us that he's on the right side.

 The heart of the piece lies with Peggy Mount's housekeeper, radiantly happy at the Colonel's romantic story before Priscilla arrives, rapturously embracing a coat hanger, elegantly arranging flowers. And then, once Priscilla turns out to be a monster, the only character able or prepared to stand up to her, an outcome that combines convincing character traits with skills that the performer was supremely good at.

A Comedy On This Day: Hancock - The Lift (16 June 1961)

 I haven't seen this one for over 20 years, and when watched in isolation I'm struck by just how unsympathetic the Hancock persona is in it - when you watch it in conjunction with other episodes, you have more emotionally invested in the lead and are more prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. It’s because of the combination of the Hancock character at his most petty and insufferable with others and being trapped in a confined space with him that makes the character hard to watch here.

 The eight other passengers in the lift offer something of a social microcosm; medicine, the church, the military and broadcasting are all represented, along with the bureaucratic lift attendant. Interestingly, the only person whom Hancock responds kindly to, managing to curtail his sarcasm and disparagement, is the Vicar, whom he presumably sees as the agent of a higher power. The script describes the TV producer as a "young man", but 38-year old Jack Watling doesn't really fit that description! The made-up programmes that have lead him to great success do sound intriguing and plausible from the titles that Galton & Simpson have invented for them; Up You Go, Let's Get Dancing and Thursday Magazine...

A Comedy On This Day: Sorry, I'm A Stranger Here Myself - Death Of A Songbird (15 June 1981)

 On his sixtieth birthday, henpecked husband Henry receives a £13,000 insurance payout and inherits a house in another part of the country so leaves home to start a new life.

 The second of three Peter Tilbury sitcoms for Thames (this one written in collaboration with David Firth), this was not quite so fondly remembered or satisfactory as the early series of Shelley or It Takes A Worried Man. It shares some aspects of the Tilbury style: a lead character who speaks in an externalised internal monologue, a sense of life being full of absurd petty irritations and rules, and clever sequencing where each scene seems to start a bit later than you'd expect. Also, it has an unusual concentrated structure as a series, with a serial narrative depicting events in 48 hours.

 This first episode displays both promise and some potential problems. Aside from Henry, the supporting characters look to be rather trying stereotypes of the period; a militant shop steward who finds objection to everything; Nadim Sawalha as an ingratiating turbaned corner shop owner who misunderstands English expressions; and - worst of all - a cockney punk rocker young person, costumed in mohair jumper, black leather jacket and green hair. None of these strike me as characters that would make me want to tune in again next week to see more of. Curiously, we get a much better idea of Henry's wife as a distinctive character in her own right, even though we never actually see her apart from as a arm, waving dismissively from behind a door.

 Against this, you do get Robin Bailey as Henry, playing exactly the type of role to which he was particularly suited.. "I have to admit that I really prefer comedy," he once said, "because it's where I can most easily share the attitude of the writer. Irony is my normal state of mind." Henry's qualities of fluency and detachment couldn't be better achieved, and much of the comedy of the character stems from Bailey's natural authority failing to be recognised or realised.

A Comedy On This Day: You're Only Young Twice - Who's Calling? (14 June 1979)

 Cissie receives an obscene phone call. In order to make Miss Milton believe Cissie's story, Flora persuades the handyman to make a similar phone call to Miss Milton. I'm sorry, run that by me again? This series has some of the most hare-brained will-this-do? plotting that I've seen in any sitcom.

 I'm not particularly drawn towards edgy, 'dark', comedy but this is one storyline that would be considerably improved by full consideration of its unsettling implications. It only took a minute or so of watching this for me to start daydreaming about how it might be done. An old lady in second childhood answers the obscene caller in innocence and finds herself deriving pleasure from the experience - as realised by Samuel Beckett in the style of Krapp's Last Tape, say. A forceful old lady gets a handyman to making an obscene phone call against his will - that would have worked well as a sketch on Chris Morris' Blue Jam...

A Comedy On This Day: Doctor At Large - It's All In The Mind (13 June 1971)

 A quaint script from John Cleese this week, that deals with occult matters when the Doctors' practice is challenged by a rival local surgery, run by a white witch. Two star comedy leads of the future appear, with Patricia Routledge as Ms Watt the witch and Mollie Sugden as a patient.

 These two guest stars both play archetypal Cleese character types; the monomaniac who speaks at a tangent to what the conversation ought to be, in exacting detail (Sugden), and the zealous speaker who turns out to be mad, trapping the reasonable interlocutor in an increasingly uncomfortable situation. Patricia Routledge is really good in this part, with a forceful trilling laugh that discomposes anyone else around, and a crazed jerking movement when casting spells that still manages to maintain a refined deportment.

 We also get a lot of "Who's on first?"-style confusion out of Dr Upton knowing that Mrs Watt is a witch, and not wanting to mention it... Which? No, I mean what! Yes? No! etc. The details of the supernatural remedies manage to sound both memorably absurd and plausible. For example, a wart is cured by rubbing a snail on it, then putting the snail on a thistle - when the snail dies, the wart disappears.

Once again we get a the surprising use of a handheld camera in the location film insert, making the Doctors hiding in Mrs Watt's garden feel much more dramatic and dangerous than you'd expect in a sitcom. And Mrs Watt's surgery, filled with occult bric-a-brac, is another commission that gives LWT's inventive set designers something to really get their teeth into.

A Comedy On this Day: Doctor In The House - A Stitch In Time (12 June 1970)

 This Garden & Oddie script does just the sort of things that you expect to see in a routine Doctor In The House episode. Upton and Waring do a stint on Casualty dressing wounds, the cord on Upton's pyjama bottoms fails so they keep dropping, as an criminal on the run (Dudley Sutton) and the Policeman pursuing him both arrive at the ward for treatment.

 Something that strikes me as much more amusing than these larks is the performance and realisation of the students' long-suffering teacher, Professor Loftus - a consistent virtue of this series. Graeme Garden likes to give Loftus the most medically precise dialogue, and the Professor is often the only character to get given actively funny, witty, things to say.

 Ernest Clark is very good at making a character who could appear overbearing always sympathetic to the viewer, helped by a particularly skill with dialogue speaking, combining impressive exactitude and projection with a sure sense of when to find moments that convey vulnerability within his speeches. (Ernest Clark must have been a busy man at this time, simultaneously serving as President of Equity from 1969-73 and fathering four children in his sixties!). Loftus' tirade in the first scene, tearing a strip off Waring when he finds him daydreaming during his lecture, is a model of scripting and performance for this character:

LOFTUS: It often seems to me that the present generation of medical students suffer from an occupational disease: premature degeneration of the nervous system. SOFTENING OF THE BRAIN, WARING! No doubt brought on by disuse and excessive alcoholic intake.

WARING: Yes, sir.

LOFTUS: (Exhausted) I don't sleep well, Waring.

WARING: No, sir?

LOFTUS: No. I lie awake dreaming of hundreds of Doctor Warings treating sprained ankles by amputation and trying to cure dysentery with senna pods!

 As the Professor turns his back on the student, the young man gives an unexpected (wry, fond) smile, showing both the shamed character of Waring and Robin Nedwell the performer being impressed and amused by what he's just seen.

A Comedy On This Day: That Mitchell & Webb Look (11 June 2009)

 Was there ever a Mitchell & Webb Look sketch that wasn't funnier when it was on the radio? Much of their comedy achieves its effect through linguistic precision and relentlessly pursuing the logic of an idea to a degree that goes further than people would normally ever consider (for example, in this episode, a pair of BBC commissioners establishing how The Apprentice will work in perpetuity as a programme in which the contestants must be idiots, and the audience will have to either be idiots to take it seriously or smug ironists congratulating themselves for noticing the premise's idiocy). Without pictures this intelligence felt very nimble and quick-witted. On television, however, I'm continually noticing the costumes and make-up, the set, David Mitchell's unease at playing most of the characters, etc. and it starts to feel a lot more laboured.

 The thing that most amused me in this edition was the pair taking receipt of a pair of Mitchell & Webb action figures, props with a tactile interest that I'd like to examine further.

 (This must be the only programme that I own on DVD where all four series are on different labels - Contender, Fremantle, BBC, Network!)