The first episode of a new series, and there's
been enough time in advance to record filmed inserts (Sid taking Tony for a
run) on location! There's not much of it, but the roads and leafy
pathways are still an unexpected expansion of the comedy's terrain. The outside
world of East Cheam that Tony and Sid live in generally exists more in the
viewer's imagination. Did they ever do that on other occasions?
Tony Hancock's acting skills are
particularly good at conveying illness, employing a wide range of all of the
nasal and husky effects that change someone's voice when they have a cold. His
face also looks oddly feminine when shrouded in a towel that acts as a
headscarf over a steaming bowl. I've always found what's funny about the
Hancock character curiously malleable. Sometimes it’s his delusions; sometimes
his selfishness, and we see something of this moment-by-moment shift in his
scene with Patricia Haynes' urban witch doctor here. He's pathetically
credulous at one instant and then sharp and insulting the next, with both
reactions equally amusing.
There's an acute little routine of Hancock
impersonating a (still wholly recognisable) television medicine advertisement
to Sid. There's one thing on television that hasn't changed a lot over the
subsequent 58 years! It’s a rare moment of reference to something modern in a
story that could have otherwise been told the same way 30 years earlier (50
years earlier if you cut out some of the more elaborate dialogue).
