Saturday, 2 February 2019

A Comedy On This Day: Chance In A Million - Winning Streak (3 February 1986)


 Chance In A Million's elaborate join-the-dots plot construction (in which every implausible action has a logical reaction, sometimes several scenes on) sometimes impresses me more than it amuses me. I found the simplest things in this episode to be the most enjoyable ones - Tom's handling of the tricks in his Paul Daniels magic set (the first prize that he wins on his unlucky lucky day), and a well-worked sequence where Tom helps a woman in the street with her box of groceries and ends up helping an identically-dressed lady to unintentionally steal them. The latter is an OB sequence on a rainy West London street, achieved without dialogue or sound in one fluid shot, filmed overhead from the other side of the road - something that could have worked in the earliest days of the moving image.

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