A Comedy On This Day: Happy Ever After - Keeping Fit! (21 August 1974)

 Just four scenes in this all-studio episode. For a light domestic comedy, the dialogue-heavy nature of the exercise requires the viewers to bring quite a lot of imagination with them.

 The first scene is in the Fletchers' garden, of which we only see the porch. Two orange floral garden loungers, June sat on hers drinking tea, Terry fidgiting restlessly around his. We don't actually see the garden, buring a long stretch of dialogue about it and Terry and June's different understanding of what the space represents to each of them - for June a place to sit in, for Terry a source of constant work. From the mass of details about what's in the garden and what needs doing there, the attentive viewer builds up a cumulative picture of what this space must look like - the one bad that Terry hasn't done yet on the left, the compost heap in front of a flowering plant to the bottom right, etc. It requires maintaining attention to get the most out of this sort of dialogue.

 The third scene - the Fletchers in bed - also requires sustained imaginative concentration. In slightly unexpected territory for this programme, June imagines her possible life as a widow, with Terry becoming jealous of any future husbands, his wife teasing him about how he wouldn't be able to do anything about it. This scene doesn't really have any bearing upon the situation going on in the moment, and it shows a certain confidence in the ability of the performers to trust the audience to go along with it.

 I'm sobered to realise that Terry is supposed to be my age now, 45-46! He's having a midlife crisis, alternating between acute hypochondria and a short-lived keep-fit resolution. Both phases are ideal material for Terry Scott's abilities as a physical comic, attempting to walk when full of imaginary aches and pains (a stiff back, a stuck out dead arm and a leg with cramp), then making a great to-do of three press-ups and failing to touch his toes.

 The mynah bird flaps about in its little cage loudly, and looks highly agitated by the studio lights.