Michael Tuchner (1976)
The funny television sitcom made into a disappointing one-and-a-half-hour feature film – a cross between ‘Carry On Newcastle Brown-Swilling’ and ‘The War Between Men and Women (North East Region)’. The much-admired scriptwriters, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais (also the authors of Porridge), dilute the comic difference in the lifestyles of Bob (Rodney Bewes) and Terry (James Bolam) by giving Terry too a regular job and a domineering other half, for the sake of an elastic plot and many, mostly crummy jokes. There’s the odd snatch of witty dialogue one remembers from the BBC’s Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? When Bob muses morbidly on the demolition of his old house, Terry swiftly replies that this sort of working-class nostalgia is strictly the property of working-class celebrities or ‘folks like you who’ve made it to the Elm Lodge housing estate’. But Terry’s dry-eyed putdowns gradually peter out, along with virtually all his other distinguishing characteristics. He and Bob eventually become two moaning bed-hoppers. Clement and La Frenais and the director, Michael Tuchner, throw in anything – including ‘visual’ humour, which is particularly inept. Near the end, when Bob is seducing a landlady’s daughter, they even resort to that standby of desperate comedy – the question ‘Wherefore art thou Romeo?’, followed by a ‘Down ‘ere – where d’you think I am!’ reply. Rodney Bewes’s insecure whine becomes wearing. James Bolam’s leathery face, fishy eyes and unadorned acting are some compensation for the dismantling of the character he’s playing. Brigit Forsyth is still entertaining as Bob’s socially ambitious wife Thelma, with her predatory looks and suggestions of giggly lewdness beneath her neat hairdo and faux-fur collars. As if to remind you it’s not a big-budget number, the film is very ugly to look at. The cast also includes Mary Tamm, Zena Walker and Alun Armstrong.
[1976]
