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Britain By Jove
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| Year: |
1960
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Director: |
Mike Hodges, Denis Postle
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| Stars: |
Ray Alan, Roddy Maude-Roxby
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| Genre: |
Comedy, Documentary, TV Series |
| Rating: |
  7 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
Lord Charles (voiced by Ray Alan) has held a press conference to announce to the nation that they should be doing more to celebrate this great British nation, and to demonstrate he is doing his bit he will travel around the tourist sites and report back as to the wonderful scenery and points of interest he will see there. His chauffeur for this excursion is Cavendish (Roddy Maude-Roxby), who Lord Charles regards as a right know-it-all as he provides a running commentary on what they are witnessing, but it's a good thing he's there as his passenger is often distracted...
This was one of the travelogue series produced by British Pathé, and was shown in various venues throughout the nineteen-sixties, all to drum up support for domestic tourism. Although it's hardly ever noted on his C.V., the co-drector of this was Mike Hodges, of Get Carter and Flash Gordon remake fame, and he helmed this with Denis Postle, who would not graduate to higher profile works like his associate did but stayed in the realm of the instructional and information film - though Hodges recruited him to help out on Flash. As it was, they illustrated a neat awareness of how to dress up what could have been very dry indeed.
Their chief coup was to cast then-popular ventriloquist Ray Alan and his dummy Lord Charles; Alan was considered one of the greatest, if not the actual greatest, proponents of his art that Britain ever produced, and he and his puppet stooges (or was he the stooge?) appeared regularly on television for decades. Here he brought a surprising note of anarchy to your basic selection of stock footage, as it was unlikely that Alan ever left the studio except for the odd insert, although there were a few exterior shots where Lord Charles was to be seen being driven along, or appearing for the punchline of the occasional gag, though most of the humour was less visual and more verbal.
The style of comedy instigated by The Goons would appear to have been an influence, and although the proceedings never grew truly surreal they did have that craziness about them. If you were hoping for a straightforward guide around the British Isles, then you certainly got the scenery you wished to see, but what they had come up with here was more of a comedy show with a tourism theme where the British line in self-deprecating wit was illustrated to a farcical degree. In the first episode they travelled around England, but not in any kind of geographical order, more hopping from one location to another depending on whatever footage was to hand, so the action would jump from Cambridge to Newcastle without much of a stop in between, leaving the sole link as Lord Charles' presence.
In the second episode they go to Scotland, which as an example of the jokes they cannot find the appropriate music to accompany the clips so we get sitar tunes instead. Then it's Northern Ireland, followed by in the third episode Wales, although everywhere they go they seem to be followed by cannon fire, one of the running jokes. The most prominent running gag was the interest His Lordship showed in drinking, his persona being that of a tipsy nobleman, so the Scottish excursion had him obsessed with the distilleries, and for the final part, a jaunt down The Thames in an attempt to lose the long suffering Cavendish, he's looking forward to living it up in London. If the intention was to give the staid world of travelogues a shake up, then they succeeded, as Britain By Jove was inventive in its parameters, light and able to prompt a good few laughs; who knows, you might have learned something by the end of the raucous daftness too.
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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| Mike Hodges (1932 - )
British director, from television, with an interesting take on crime movies. His first film was the gritty, gangster cult Get Carter, but the offbeat follow-up Pulp was not as successful. The Terminal Man was a Hollywood science fiction thriller, and Flash Gordon a gloriously over-the-top comic book epic which showed Hodges' good humour to its best effect.
However, the straight comedy Morons from Outer Space was a flop, though it found a few fans, and while IRA drama Prayer for the Dying and the supernatural Black Rainbow weren't successful either, gambling thriller Croupier was an unexpected sleeper hit in America. Tough gangster movie I'll Sleep When I'm Dead followed. |
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