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.
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.
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