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!
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!
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