A Comedy On This Day: Next Of Kin - Accidental Death (15 May 1995)

 Ah, so this is how it began... I didn't catch this first episode at the time, but went on to watch the rest of the series.

 Jesus God, this is a grim half-hour. Grandparents suddenly, unwillingly, having to look after children again is a fine premise for a sitcom, but the initially set-up (their son and daughter-in-law have been killed in a car crash) is always going to be problematic for an ostensibly funny programme. The easiest option would be grandparents who loved their children sometimes finding common ground with the difficult grandchildren through shared grief, though that could be ickily sentimental. A neutral way of doing it would be to have had the parents living in Australia or somewhere, which (with a few deft lines) would explain why the grandchildren are strangers to the grandparents.

 This episode certainly doesn't go in for making the grandparents sympathetic figures. The more that we learn about the dead son and daughter-in-law, the less space we are given to empathise with the family's estrangement. One of the first things that we learn is the details of the day of the final breach, at Christmas five years ago when they were served a vegetarian meal and the daughter-in law asked them to smoke in the garden. And you think, well, at most that only sounds a bit irritating... The William Gaunt character even says at one point, "I didn't raise my son to become a vegetarian piano teacher", which doesn't sound like too much of a terrible disappointment. And certainly not worth cutting yourself off from your grandchildren for.

 You can sense the audience wondering how to respond to this. They're very keen to laugh at anything that's obviously a joke, which reminds them that they're still watching a comedy. To their credit, Penelope Keith and William Gaunt don't play against the script and mine the story for palliative moments of charm, either. In a way, the presence of an audience holds this particular episode back a bit, because the idea of parents who don't mourn their children's shocking deaths lends itself more obviously to dramatic investigation rather than inspiring laughter. As it is, there are certain significant scenes, like the policeman giving the news, that get moved away from rather too quickly because of their lack of comic potential.

 The episode's continual refusal to take any edge off a story of unsympathetic people in a horrendous situation is admirable, but also forbidding and uninviting.

A Comedy On This Day: Brass - Bradley Holds His Own (14 May 1990)

 From the final series of the 'trouble at mill' soap opera parody. Made six years after the original run, for Channel Four rather than ITV, and (from memory) not quite so good as it had been.

 This kind of rather cerebral comedy is the sort of thing that wins more awards than it does hearts. It make comedy out of elaborate plotting, experimentation with wordplay and register, and ornate visual gags in which one detail in the mise en scene eventually takes over the whole frame (such as a smoking fire that turns the screen grey, or a love scene between a craftsman painting a bomb and his girlfriend which ends with both covered in paint). Without anything much for me to latch on to emotionally, I find it easier to admire than to enjoy.

 The WWII plot concerns the secret construction of a submarine, planned to sink a fishing boat in the Irish Sea in order to drag Eire into the war. Its the properties especially made for this storyline that made me smile when I was watching this; a fake German lifebelt to be left at the scene of the crime bearing two big swastikas and the letters "Das Boot" in gothic script; the submarine itself, an impractically boxy-looking Meccano thing, very briefly shown in a clever cutaway that makes it look quite convincing; the vital component that the villain has removed from the submarine - an enormous brass plug with a red switch.

A Comedy On This Day: Spitting Image (13 May 1984)

 This first series is still taking an age to find its feet. The only moment to really capture my imagination is a choreographed sequence in a diner during the 'Do Doo Ron Ron' Reagan musical number. For some reason they've decided to include full size figures of Ayatollah Khomeini and an Iranian woman among the revellers, meaning that - in a tiny space of a few feet - a dancer in heavy robes and a rubber mask has been expected to jump into the arms of (and be caught by) a similarly incommoded figure. It brings it home to you just how on the hoof production of this programme was.

 One thing that will invariably - if only momentarily - perk up my interest watching these old episodes is that two or three "I don't remember them having a puppet" faces will always turn up every edition. Alongside of Gary Hart, this week also features Saatchi & Saatchi and Len Murray. Len Murray! I doubt that they were still using models of trade union leaders by the mid-nineties (John Monks? Bill Morris?)

A Comedy On This Day: Alfresco (12 May 1984)

 I find the 'pretend pub' linking sections in this second series - in which all six of the troupe play exaggerated versions of their personas in a deliberately imaginary setting - trying in the extreme. It feels thrown together, and takes away a lot of screen time that would have been much better spent on proper, crafted, sketches.

 When you eventually get to those, they're always more comically interesting than ever actively funny to my find. Ben Elton had a rather theoretical sense of what makes a sketch - set up a premise which you then undermine through reversing, characters will then lose composure and behave eccentrically, etc. - but Robbie Coltrane, Hugh Laurie, Siobhan Redmond and Emma Thompson were all such good comic actors that there are often little flashes of surprising characterisation which outshine the material that they're working with.

 One case in point is a skit with Coltrane and Redmond as parents who visit an Educational Officer (Laurie) in the naive expectation that they can send their son to Eton. The point of the sketch is quickly apparent, and it doesn't escalate in any very interesting way, but Hugh Laurie manages to find a different response to convey awkwardness, condescension and having to convey disappointment for each successive exchange that gives the routine a depth and conviction. It’s taped in a real office (one of a large number of sketches recorded on OB), which gives the proceedings a muted, real life mood.

 There's also a sketch about an exclusive restaurant not accepting a diner without a tie, a familiar scenario. When did people finally stop doing versions of this old comedy standby?

A Comedy On This Day: Get Some In! (11 May 1978)

 Although this late episode is only mildly funny, it’s still worth watching as a good example of Esmonde & Larbey's storytelling skills.

 Corporal Marsh is still enjoying his status as a modest military hero, believed to have carried his dying colleague through snowy wastes for two days. The episode starts with his telling the tale once again, this time to an adoring audience in a Church Hall. This heroic tale is undercut by flashbacks of his cowardice in action - with the snowy wilderness rather hopefully realised through a lot of polystyrene snow being thrown at Tony Selby in a little corner of the Teddington studio.

 The four young airmen are in the audience for this event, which is hosted by Lilley's Vicar father. Despairing at watching Marsh take everyone in, the milksop character of Lilly reasons that if you can't beat them join them, vowing to now follow Marsh's example. Sitcom audiences always appreciate an 'out of character' story, and derive some pleasure through watching this wet character indulge himself with drinking, leering and attempting some PG certificate swearing.

 The end of the episode is particularly interesting. Lilley's colleagues get fed up with Lilley as a bully and braggart, and send for his vicar father to come over and see him right again. Lilley comes into possession of an incriminating diary from the dead man in the snow, offering ample evidence of Marsh's lies and cowardice. The episode ends with Marsh pleading Lilley for a copy of the diary, and the Reverend Lilley handing it back to Marsh. The priest's reasoning is that, instead of shopping him, the best course of action is to leave the matter to Marsh's guilty conscience. Its a curiously unprescriptive and ambiguous ending which makes the viewer consider the morality of actions, and a moment that lends the preceding merriment considerable depth and thoughtfulness.

A Comedy On This Day: Rising Damp - Fawcett's Python (10 May 1977)

I'm afraid that there's something of the philistine about you, Mr Rigsby.

That's very nice of you, Miss Jones.

 This script goes off on a detour a third of the way in. The first two scenes are about the implications of a scarlet woman lodging in the house, provoking Rigsby's lechery, Alan's guilelessness and Miss Jones's condemnation. The new lodger's painted toenails are noticed with particular censure - a telling detail that must have lost any purchase by about 1990.

 Then, once it becomes known that Madeline has been keeping a python in her room, farce becomes the dominant mode. As luck would have it, Philip possesses a stuffed python and much hilarious confusion is intended to arise from the two snakes in the house. Unfortunately a lack of resources scuppers this comedy, because (apart from a separately-recorded initial cutaway shot of a live snake in a basket) both creatures look equally rubbery. Whenever the 'real' snake springs into life, it makes me think about the sterling work that the actors are doing attempting to maintain the illusion, rather than the intended situation.

A Comedy On This Day: The Good Life - The Pagan Rite (9 May 1975)

 If only I had the memory and could reproduce Penelope Keith's intonation, then The Good Life really is one of the most quotable comedy series that there's ever been. Margo has a reply for every occasion. Just a few from this week:

Oh, I'm so sorry. I thought you were telling a joke.

I've got a horrible feeling that this conversation is nose-diving into the carnal.

Then will you kindly eat it in the kitchen with the extractor fan full on? Last time, this upholstery reeked of vindaloo for a week.

No, I have not finished, Miss Mountshaft. Furthermore, let us remember that it is I who supplied the gingerbread men for rehearsal teas. (...) "Blackmail" is an ugly word, Miss Mountshaft.

I've never been very comfortable with Ian and Gilly since they started dabbling in those tarot cards.

 One line that I'd never really noticed before (probably because you tend to concentrate on the four leads), but which made me laugh and laugh this time around, comes from Reginald Marsh's 'Sir'. He explains his vision of the graphic that he wants Tom to design for a trade exhibition: "I want people who visit this exhibition to get a picture of me, smiling benignly at them through... a laurel wreath, or something like that. I want them to feel, 'Here's a man we can trust!'. That's all I want."

 Something else I've never noticed before occurs in the final scene in the hotel dining room. The moment when Barbara pours Tom's dessert of green figs into his lap is rather rushed and doesn't ring particularly true, but something much funnier is happening in the backround where you can see John Scott Martin's waiter, laughing meanly at Tom's misfortune.