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00:29I'm a huge maniac!
00:31Whoops. Lost me balance.
00:34If there's one characteristic that defines Britain above any other,
00:38it's our sense of humour.
00:43Or so we like to tell ourselves.
00:48But it's certainly defined British cinema.
00:51From Carry On Cleo...
00:53In for me! In for me!
00:55They've all got it in for me!
00:57..to Calendar Girls.
00:59With respect, I didn't hear him use the phrase,
01:01whip your bras off.
01:03Sean the Sheep...
01:06..to Sean of the Dead.
01:08And hold it down.
01:10Just get her off me!
01:12We can't resist challenging convention...
01:15Achtung! Guten Tag.
01:17I shouldn't like to be on the receiving end of that lot.
01:19..and skewering pomposity...
01:21EXPLOSION
01:23..while casually tossing off a double entendre.
01:26Oh, yes.
01:28And I should have cleaned that can and your ring for you.
01:30In Secrets of Cinema, I explore the conventions
01:33which underwrite the movies we love the most
01:36and examine the techniques filmmakers use
01:38to keep us coming back for more.
01:42Tonight, I'll show you why making fools of ourselves...
01:45Oh, shut up! Hold on!
01:47..makes for seriously good cinema.
01:50MUSIC PLAYS
01:55This is Crockwood Trotterfield.
01:57Crockwood Copperfield. Pleased to meet you, Mrs Trotterfield.
02:00The pleasure is all mine.
02:02What do you have in your hand? It's nothing.
02:04Oh, just a small piece of wool, but all is well.
02:06Follow me.
02:08One of my favourite releases of the last few years
02:10is The Personal History of David Copperfield.
02:13Janet! Donkeys! Donkeys!
02:16Based on Charles Dickens' 19th-century novel
02:19and benefiting from 21st-century colour-blind casting...
02:22Get off my lawn!
02:24..it's a glorious showcase for smart British comedy
02:27from the madcap... Donkeys, don't!
02:29..to the mordant.
02:31Very ill. Very ill? Dangerously ill.
02:34She's dead.
02:36Brilliantly reimagining Dickens' timeless source,
02:39the film conjures a vibrant portrait of Britain.
02:42Not down there. Creditors make that road impossible.
02:45Two tailors and a most unreasonable muffin man.
02:48With Dev Patel leading an ensemble cast who never miss a beat.
02:52What are you doing? Medicine. Reviving you.
02:55This is salad dressing. Is it? I thought it was Armagnac.
02:58David Copperfield draws on a huge reservoir
03:01of British comedy talent,
03:03one that's been more than a century in the making.
03:06In fact, the British comic sensibility
03:08was a formative element of modern cinema.
03:11Charlie Chaplin, a British comedian
03:14but an international movie star,
03:16was once the defining image of cinema as a whole
03:19and the most instantly recognisable human being in the world.
03:23Coming out of the British music hall tradition,
03:26Chaplin became a pioneer of the moving image in America,
03:29both in front of and behind the camera,
03:31and helped shape screen comedy for decades.
03:34Although Chaplin made the transition to sound,
03:37he didn't want audiences to hear his little tramp speak,
03:40and largely kept to that,
03:42which meant that many of his international fans
03:45didn't know their favourite screen figure had an English accent.
03:49Chaplin was British-born, British-trained
03:52and an utterly British personality,
03:55but his fame and achievements can be laid on Hollywood.
04:01Other British comics, Peter Sellers, Stan Laurel,
04:04Elton Bourne, Bob Hope, have become international figures,
04:08but just as many greats have stayed home.
04:11exploring uniquely British subject matter.
04:14So, what makes a great comic actor?
04:18Matron, what is it? What do you want?
04:21Let's start with the rich array of British character actors.
04:25Oh, I'm feeling wonderful.
04:27I just thought we might have a little drink.
04:29Those who are inherently funny, thanks to their innate mannerisms,
04:32how they walk, talk,
04:34the magical way their facial expressions register on screen.
04:37I wonder if you'd look after Georgie.
04:39She gets so nervous in committee.
04:41Take that revolting animal away from me.
04:43They may be traditional actors like Margaret Rutherford
04:46or professional comedians like Sanjeev Bhaskar.
04:50Either way, these performers seem to embody
04:53particular British attitudes and character types.
04:56They have funny bones.
04:59Then there are those who are funny thanks to clever writing
05:02and their own extraordinary technical skill.
05:05Look, something very urgent has come up
05:07and I want you to place an emergency person-to-person call
05:10with President Merkin Muffley in the Pentagon, Washington, DC.
05:13Like Peter Sellers and his tour de force in Doctor Strangelove,
05:16playing three very different characters.
05:19Mr President, I would not rule out the chance
05:23to preserve a nucleus of human specimens.
05:27It would be quite easy.
05:31At the bottom of some of our deeper mine shafts.
05:37Sellers was following in the footsteps of his hero, Alec Guinness...
05:41That was Admiral Lord Horatio Descoyne.
05:44..who played no less than eight different characters
05:47in Kind Hearts and Coronets.
05:49That was Lady Agatha Descoyne.
05:53Guinness and Sellers took pride in being unrecognisable
05:56from performance to performance.
05:58For a more recent equivalent, look at this standout turn
06:02in the hit British comedy Kinky Boots from Chiwetel Ejiofor,
06:06another chameleon-like actor who transforms himself from role to role.
06:11In fact, some might say that attempts of certain people
06:13to make a man out of me as a child
06:15is exactly the reason that I now wear a frock.
06:17If, therefore, I get the feeling
06:19somebody didn't want me to come to Northampton...
06:21No, no, no, no, no.
06:22Also, I can tell from years of experience
06:24when I'm being smuggled in through a rear door.
06:27The fact is, being funny clever isn't a lesser form than funny bones,
06:32and all great comics or comic actors
06:34have to combine the two strands to some extent.
06:38Hey, Tottenham.
06:41Tottenham.
06:44It's worth noting that success in one medium
06:46doesn't guarantee success in another.
06:49Many stars of radio or TV comedy
06:52have tried to export their personas to the cinema with mixed results.
06:57Finished.
06:58Marvellous.
07:00Dudley Moore may have become a Hollywood star,
07:02but his celebrated TV partnership with Peter Cook
07:05produced just one notable movie,
07:08their self-scripted 1967 hit Bedazzled.
07:11Cook's role as the Devil was one of his few big-screen successes.
07:15You're not wearing nylon underwear, are you?
07:17Why?
07:18It disintegrates at high speeds.
07:19Prepare yourself.
07:21The magic words LBJ.
07:25Here, my ice lolly's melted.
07:29You really must be the Devil.
07:31Incarnate. How do you do?
07:32Oh, how do you do?
07:34By contrast, the Monty Python team enjoyed a string of box office hits,
07:39perhaps because their surreal visions worked on a more cinematic scale.
07:44By what name are you known?
07:46There are some who call me...
07:50..Tim.
07:51In fact, several of today's most successful
07:54British comedy feature film directors
07:56honed their skills on television, including Edgar Wright...
08:02..Paul King...
08:08..Mandy Fletcher, who's directed Ab Fab on both the small and big screens...
08:13Oh, Eddie, you're my most favourite person in the whole world.
08:17You have to do my PR. Please, you have to.
08:20..and Phyllida Lloyd, who brought her TV and theatre experience
08:23to Mamma Mia, which in 2008 overtook Titanic
08:26to become the highest-grossing film in UK box office history.
08:30But beyond the talent that underpins British comedy cinema,
08:34there are particular themes that we return to again and again,
08:38situations and characters that reveal
08:40our national preoccupations and obsessions.
08:43And at the heart of all of this is a recurrent figure
08:47who's both all-important and entirely unimportant.
08:52The Tramp may have been an American production,
08:55but in it, Charlie Chaplin established the basic archetype
08:58of British comedy, the little man.
09:01The indefatigable spirit who keeps struggling
09:04as everything stacks up against him.
09:07Whether it's bullies, authority figures, his own ineptitude,
09:12or simply malice.
09:14The little man is a character,
09:16whether it's bullies, authority figures, his own ineptitude,
09:20or simply malign fate itself.
09:26Even if they win out in the end,
09:28this character type is a perennial underdog,
09:31and the British have embraced such creatures with open arms,
09:34creating some of the biggest box office stars in this country's history.
09:38Going to ride it, George?
09:40What do you think he's going to do, milk it?
09:42George Formby's first big hit was 1935's No Limit.
09:46That streamline, that is.
09:48Why, don't you believe me?
09:51Aye, if you swear to it.
09:53Finger wet, finger dry.
09:55Finger wet, finger dry.
09:57He gives the little man a distinctly Lancastrian spin
10:00as a Wigan chimney sweep who dreams of victory in the Isle of Man TT.
10:06Formby may not have had Chaplin's silent era expressiveness,
10:10but he did have a handy little instrument
10:13and a stream of suggestive lyrics.
10:15My ribs begin to shake about
10:17There's all my spare parts sticking out
10:19So come along and see me ride
10:21You can see me race
10:25Formby also had a gift for physical comedy.
10:28It's further down than I thought it was.
10:32It's further down than I thought it was.
10:35And he followed in the footsteps of Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton
10:39by performing some of his own stunts...
10:41Shot away like a bullet.
10:44..including motorcycle shots for No Limit's climactic race.
10:49It's said that Chaplin's own favourite clown was Norman Wisdom,
10:53another master of physical comedy...
10:56Norman! Norman!
10:58..and the biggest star in British cinema from the mid-'50s to the early-'60s.
11:03Wisdom is at his most Chaplin-esque
11:06in a pathos-filled, early-1960s film.
11:09It's said that Chaplin's own favourite clown was Norman Wisdom,
11:13another master of physical comedy.
11:16It's said that Chaplin's own favourite clown was Norman Wisdom,
11:20another master of physical comedy.
11:23As an orphanage worker trying to raise money for a little boy's present,
11:27Wisdom channels Chaplin's masterpiece City Lights
11:30when his well-meaning man-child
11:32gets caught in a series of escalating misadventures.
11:41Occasionally, little men are actually little women,
11:44although this is an area in which big-screen British comedy
11:47still has a lot of catching up to do.
11:49One of the best examples is The Knack.
11:52Rita Tushingham is newly arrived in swinging London,
11:55caught in a series of silent and often surreal comic encounters.
12:15Nice to meet you. Right, the car's just here.
12:18They're not infected! What do you like?
12:20They're clean. I just washed them specially. Honest.
12:24More recently, in Mike Lee's Happy Go Lucky,
12:28Sally Hawkins is perfectly cast as Poppy,
12:31whose almost pathological cheerfulness
12:33is tested by Eddie Marzan's driving instructor.
12:36Now, have you ever had a driving lesson before?
12:38Yeah. No. It wasn't really a lesson.
12:41It was in the Cadillac in Miami, bunny hop down the beach.
12:44I was a bit pissed. It was Larry's.
12:46Other incarnations of the little man include a bear...
12:50Paddington! What is going on in there?
12:52Er, nothing.
12:54I'm just having a spot of bother with the facilities.
12:57..and even a messiah...
12:59Don't pass judgment on other people
13:02or you might get judged yourself.
13:04..depending on who you ask.
13:07Now, you listen here! He's not the messiah!
13:10He's a very naughty boy!
13:12This brings us to an interesting variation,
13:15the little man who thinks he's a big man.
13:18British comedy has a long tradition of pompous
13:21and petty authority figures,
13:23and occasionally they're given top billing.
13:25Probably the best known is the commander
13:27of the Warmington-on-Sea Home Guard,
13:29who enjoyed their first big-screen outing in 1971.
13:34That's enough of that!
13:38Who do you think you are?
13:39We're the local defence volunteers
13:41and I'm their appointed commander, Captain Manoring.
13:43And I must ask you to keep your hands off my privates.
13:46Captain Manoring was partly inspired by Will Hayes' titular character
13:50in the 1937 comedy Oh, Mr Porter,
13:53an officious railway worker who's packed off to run
13:56the remote Northern Irish station of Buggles Kelly.
14:00How did that happen? Do you know where you sent those facts?
14:03Here, down there. You've done it.
14:11Well, we've got the carriage anyway.
14:13You can see an even closer relative of Manoring
14:16in Alexander McKendrick's Whisky Galore.
14:19Basil Radford's Captain Waggot runs the Home Guard
14:22on the Scottish island of Toddy.
14:24It's not good enough, you know.
14:26Every time they move that roadblock,
14:28it's longer than the last. How do you account for that?
14:31Well, I wouldn't say they were doing too badly, sir.
14:34It's pretty heavy going, you know.
14:36All right, sergeant, we'll see it again.
14:38Right once again, men. Move!
14:40Like Porter, he's a bossy Englishman far from England and out of his depth.
14:44It's very discouraging.
14:46Yes, sir. Just one point, it did strike me, sir.
14:49What's that?
14:51Well, sir, if this is the only road round the island,
14:54it would be to turn round and come here the other way.
15:00Yes.
15:02I was wondering when you were going to think of that.
15:05You should have pointed that out to me before, Mr Campbell.
15:08You'll find little men with big egos in all walks of life.
15:12Acting...
15:14Bastard asked me to understudy Constantine and the Seagull.
15:20I'm not going to understudy anybody.
15:23Broadcasting...
15:25But I was having a fascinating conversation
15:28with the proud father of Norfolk's most suntanned child.
15:31Just passed his details on to the social services.
15:34The time is 11.59 and 55 seconds.
15:37Midday. Well, no, well, yeah, it is now.
15:40These characters constantly struggle against a world
15:43that isn't quite as convinced of their talent as they are.
15:53But for sheer self-delusion,
15:55it's hard to beat Tony Hancock in The Rebel.
15:58A frustrated office drone,
16:00Hancock is working on a secret masterpiece
16:03in his London boarding house.
16:13Oh, you temptress!
16:16Oh, you voluptuous Jezebel!
16:19Oh, my Aphrodite!
16:22What carnal desires did you stir in the breasts of helpless men?
16:26Devoid of talent but benefiting from a series of misunderstandings,
16:30Hancock becomes the toast of the Paris art scene.
16:33Smile, please.
16:35This way, Monsieur, please. Down here, Monsieur.
16:38According to screenwriters Ray Galton and Alan Simpson,
16:41no less than Lucian Freud said The Rebel was the best film
16:44about modern art ever made.
16:46Perhaps because it doesn't just poke fun
16:48at the pretensions of Hancock's character,
16:50but at the entire art establishment.
16:53The little man is often a means to take on more powerful targets.
17:05So, where shall we sit, darling?
17:07Well, why don't I go at the head here and Francis...
17:11I'll pop here.
17:12In Gurinder Chadha's Blinded By The Light,
17:14adapted from the memoir by Sarfraz Manzoor,
17:17working-class Muslim Javed is invited to meet his girlfriend's parents.
17:21What could possibly go wrong?
17:23Eliza's very picky on who she brings home.
17:25Yes, she picks the boys she thinks we're going to find the most shocking.
17:31Politics.
17:33It's very personal for our Eliza, isn't it, Princess?
17:35The only thing shocking, Dad, is your bigotry towards anybody
17:38who isn't white, middle-class and true blue.
17:40You'll have to forgive Eliza.
17:42Sometimes I'm not sure how he raised such a firebrand.
17:45Blinded By The Light adds the complications of race and religion
17:48to class, the big subject of British comedy
17:51that differentiates it from the classless vision of Hollywood.
17:55With Eliza, it's the more provocative, the better.
17:58But what's provocative about Javed?
18:03Time and again, comedy films challenge the manners, conventions
18:07and hierarchies of British society,
18:09often through conflict between the classes,
18:12but sometimes from within them.
18:15Cake and tea.
18:17Didn't you hear? She said she'd closed.
18:20What do you want in here?
18:22Cake. What's it got to do with you?
18:24Withnal may look dishevelled, but he's also probably the poshest person
18:28in this stuffy Penrith tearoom,
18:30which makes his disruptive drunkenness all the more delicious.
18:33If you don't leave, we'll call the police.
18:36We want the finest wines available to humanity.
18:39We want them here and we want them now.
18:41Miss Blenner has it. Telephone the police.
18:44But it's easier to root for an underdog
18:46if they weren't born with a silver spoon in their mouth.
18:49You can see why George Formley would appeal
18:51to a largely working-class 1930s audience
18:54as a chimney sweep who wins the heart of middle-class Florence Desmond.
18:59I hope we're going to have some nice weather.
19:01I've come all the way from London.
19:03You can tell that with the daft way you speak.
19:05Thank you. Oh, you're welcome.
19:08I come from Flagdyke.
19:10Hey, lad, I could tell that with the daft way you look.
19:13That's one to you, isn't it? Ow!
19:15Oh, I'm so sorry. Did I prick you?
19:17It's all right. It didn't go so very deep.
19:20But British comedies made in the years following World War II
19:23suggest the old social certainties are shifting.
19:27I'm All Right Jack captures a struggling Britain
19:30trying to find its way in the Suez-era industrial world.
19:34What's your game?
19:36Inverting the upwardly mobile George Formby model,
19:40Ian Carmichael is the upper-class innocent
19:43who becomes a forklift driver.
19:46With Peter Sellers as a union shop steward,
19:49the scene is set for some very direct class confrontation.
19:53What do you think you're doing?
19:55I'm frightfully sorry.
19:57I'm afraid I haven't quite got this thing buttoned up yet.
20:00What's your name? Windrush.
20:02Oh. Me and my colleagues of the Works Committee.
20:05How do you do?
20:07Would you mind producing your union card?
20:09I'm afraid I can't.
20:11I'm All Right Jack takes swipes at bosses and workers
20:14while still essentially siding with the former.
20:17Compare its cynically satirical 1959 take
20:20with the rather more positive,
20:22even nostalgic portrayal of unions
20:24in the 2010 real-life comedy-drama Made in Dagenham.
20:28Everybody out.
20:32Set during the 1968 Ford machinist strike
20:35but made more than 40 years later,
20:37Made in Dagenham dramatises a crucial step
20:40in the campaign for equal wages for women.
20:44Hey!
20:46Finish it, Fork! Give us a call, love, eh?
20:49This is unbelievable. I never thought we'd get this backing.
20:52It's got an inspiring feel-good factor,
20:54more typical of recent comedies
20:56than those made in the period it depicts.
20:58Go, love, go!
21:00We're not entirely unfurled, look!
21:08I know the feeling.
21:12You might not describe Ken Loach as a feel-good director,
21:16but like his contemporary Mike Lee,
21:18Loach knows how to use humour to make a serious point.
21:21Where are you supposed to go for a crap?
21:23What bicycle club, Tom? Shit yourself!
21:25Listen, Larry, your blood is stupid.
21:27Do you know where to go? Up the floor, floor,
21:30get on to the scaffold and into the show flat.
21:33We're always bloody using it!
21:34Actual former builder Ricky Tomlinson
21:36starred in Loach's 1991 riff-raff,
21:39which follows low-paid construction workers
21:41building luxury flats that they could never dream of affording.
21:46Loach shows his flair for comic timing in a perfect set piece
21:50that's also a droll comment on the London property market.
21:53The bathroom here, which I think you'll find very impressive.
21:56SHATTERING
21:58SHE SCREAMS
22:01Where's the mirror?
22:05Who are you?
22:07Get out of there!
22:11Everything seems to be working.
22:13Loach's bathroom moment unexpectedly echoes
22:16a scene in A Fish Called Wanda,
22:18a film from a completely different milieu
22:20that nonetheless shares a key trait of British comedy.
22:30Being caught with your pants down is the stuff of British nightmares,
22:34whatever your wealth or class.
22:37So it's interesting that two of the most popular British comedies
22:41from the last 25 years see very different sets of characters
22:45shedding social convention by shedding their clothes.
22:49Are we all right?
22:51Right for what?
22:53Taking his kit off.
22:55I thought you were turning me into a fancy dancer.
22:58Listen, ladies, we are strippers, aren't we?
23:00What, here? Now? In this house?
23:03This is a good area, this is.
23:08Of course, The Full Monty isn't just about working-class men
23:11losing their inhibitions,
23:13but about trying to find dignity and purpose
23:16in post-industrial Sheffield.
23:23Right. No. I've got to go anyway.
23:26Then there are the middle-class women of New York,
23:30Then there are the middle-class women of Napley,
23:33spurred on by tragedy to bare their flesh for charity.
23:39No, not yet, wait. We've just taken one of the tables.
23:42We'll sell a lot of calendars.
23:49Can anyone see my nipples?
23:51The central joke in both Calendar Girls and The Full Monty
23:54is that, for all the undressing,
23:56the furthest thing from the characters' minds
23:59is a subject around which British comedy has danced
24:02with embarrassment for decades.
24:13Now I go in the cleaning To earn an honest bob
24:17For an Aussie Parker It's an interesting job
24:20It's often been noted that the defining factor
24:23of most British sex comedies
24:25is that they're neither sexy nor funny.
24:35Yet since the days of George Formby,
24:37British cinema has been coyly making fnaf-na jokes
24:40about a subject we cannot bear to face head-on.
24:44Sex only really became an acknowledged theme
24:47in British comedy films when social attitudes relaxed in the 60s.
24:51Films like The Knack,
24:53from American émigré director Richard Lester,
24:56found the little man asking more openly
24:59what had previously remained unsaid.
25:01Would you show me?
25:05You mean how I get women, hmm?
25:08Yes. Yes, I mean that.
25:10But you haven't even started, Colin. The right food, for example.
25:13The right food doesn't matter. Food is of the utmost importance.
25:16Food is of the essence. One's body needs protein and energy-giving substances.
25:19Yes, but look... I find that with my perhaps unusual sexual demands,
25:22my body requires at least twice the normal daily intake of protein.
25:25Well, I won't need that much, will I?
25:28Protein? No.
25:30Thank you, nurse.
25:33Sorry, sister.
25:35Released at the height of the swinging 60s,
25:37Carry On Doctor upped the sex factor
25:40more than any previous entry in the series.
25:43Signalling a direction the films would increasingly follow,
25:46Barbara Windsor is a seaside postcard caricature come to life.
25:51Hi. Oh, what a lovely-looking pair.
25:54Took the words right out of my mouth.
26:00I am a well-known and practising doctor.
26:03In the artistic and beautiful picture which now follows,
26:06you will see naked men and women
26:09engaged in the various arts of sexual love.
26:12Later, Carry On At Your Convenience parodied the educational sex films
26:18that became voguish in the late 60s and early 70s.
26:23God, you don't miss a trick, do you?
26:28While the Carry On films relied largely upon suggestion and innuendo,
26:33they paved the way for a sub-genre of highly profitable films
26:36mixing broad comedy with soft-core nudity
26:40that bizarrely came to embody the cultural landscape of 70s Britain.
26:45And the genre's defining hit
26:47was the spiritual descendant of George Formby's most famous song.
26:51Always turn out how you want it to be.
26:55Favourite gear is a white nylon T-shirt
26:57cos when you wet it, you can press it up against the window.
26:59Confessions Of A Window Cleaner was less of a departure
27:02from British comedy tradition than you might think.
27:05Carol! What?
27:07It was helmed by veteran director Val Guest,
27:10whose early credits include co-writing Oh, Mr Porter.
27:15Just finishing the carpet. Be right with you.
27:17Robin Asquith's encounters often play out like a classic bedroom farce.
27:22Hello. They let me off early.
27:24Oh.
27:25Morning.
27:27Morning.
27:28Oh. Sit in.
27:30And don't worry about the payment. We'll send an account.
27:35Extraordinary way to clean windows.
27:37Oh, he'll come back and do the rest later.
27:39No, I mean he was cleaning them with a pair of knickers.
27:42Knickers?
27:43There's even an appearance by John the Measurer.
27:46I take it you're conversant with a tyre test?
27:48It's like he's there to reassure the audience
27:50that they haven't strayed too far from the mainstream.
27:53A huge box office hit in 1974,
27:56Confessions Of A Window Cleaner
27:58triggered a short-lived British sex comedy boom.
28:01It produced such oddities as Eskimo Nell,
28:04a satire on the sex film industry featuring Roy Kinnear
28:08and a pre-James Herriot Christopher Timothy.
28:11You've got to give the public what it wants.
28:13I did a film a few years ago, it was called Midnight Forever.
28:16Midnight Forever?
28:17That wasn't the Philip Marceau picture about the Spanish Civil War, was it?
28:20No, this was about lesbianism in a convent.
28:22Directed by Martin Campbell,
28:24later of GoldenEye and Casino Royale fame,
28:27Eskimo Nell poked fun at clean-up campaigners
28:30like Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford.
28:36The characters duped Lady Longhorn into funding their sex film
28:40by pretending it's a wholesome family drama.
28:43This is Harris Tweedle. He's writing the script.
28:46I've heard so much about you from Dennis already, it does sound exciting.
28:54And who's interested in birds, then?
28:57That's Harris. He's into birds.
28:59Such a charming hobby.
29:01My late husband was a keen ornithologist.
29:04He specialised in tits.
29:07Perhaps the most unexpected and gritty British outing
29:11was 1987's Rita Sue and Bob Too.
29:14This still-controversial black comedy
29:17was adapted by screenwriter Andrea Dunbar from her own stage plays.
29:23I'll give you two a ride round for half an hour, will you, ma'am?
29:26No.
29:27A story about the relationship between two teenage girls
29:31and a married man would be queasy in pretty much anyone else's hands,
29:35but Dunbar, who died at only 29, had a truly authentic voice.
29:40Can either of you two put a Durex on?
29:43What's a Durex? I think you mean to rub a Johnny.
29:46That's right.
29:47Well, what you call him rub a Johnny's Durex for?
29:50Durex is proper name for him.
29:52Oh, I didn't know. Never had any use for him meself.
29:56Can you put one on?
29:58I wouldn't know what to do with one.
30:00Dunbar had been a teenage mother herself
30:02and lived on an estate in Bradford where much of the film was shot.
30:06Bob's really nice, isn't he?
30:10He's the sort of fella I could live with,
30:12as long as he weren't doing with me what he's doing with his wife.
30:15You can't expect it else, can you?
30:18God, if I had a fella like him, I'd expect him to do it.
30:21You mean to tell me you wouldn't be bothered
30:23if he was going with hot lasses he could get?
30:25Well, what you don't know don't take you.
30:28Does it?
30:29Rita Sue and Bob Two's mix of sex, humour and tough social realism
30:34remains rare in modern British cinema.
30:37But its frank attitude towards female sexuality
30:40paved the way for the more glossy rom-coms
30:43that would become a highly exportable staple of the British film industry.
30:49Equally important, we'll find nice, sensible boyfriend to go out with
30:53and not continue to form romantic attachments to any of the following.
30:56Alcoholics, workaholics, commitment phobics, peeping Toms,
30:59megalomaniacs, emotional fuckwits or perverts.
31:02Bridget Jones's Diary, directed by Sharon Maguire
31:05from Helen Fielding's celebrated book,
31:07talks directly and entertainingly about sex without actually showing it.
31:12Yes, Bridget?
31:13That thing you just did is actually illegal in several countries.
31:16That is, of course, the major reason I'm so thrilled to be living in Britain today.
31:20Yes, I can't understand why the Prime Minister
31:23doesn't mention it more in his speeches.
31:25You should write to him about it. I intend to.
31:28It's that frisson of the illicit rather than the sex itself
31:32that seems to count most.
31:34And when it comes to illicit activities,
31:36some comedy films take a much more illegal turn.
31:46Most men who long to be rich
31:48know inwardly that they will never achieve their ambition.
31:52But I was in the unique position of having a fortune literally within my grasp.
31:57For it was my job to supervise the deliveries of bullion
32:00from the gold refinery to the bank.
32:02In The Lavender Hill Mob,
32:04Alec Guinness is a little man who sets out to make it big
32:07by robbing the bank that employs him.
32:12Of course, as we know from our secrets of cinema on heist movies,
32:15the genre is full of ironies and reversals,
32:18and The Lavender Hill Mob makes much of their comic potential.
32:24After the gold is melted down and smuggled to France
32:27disguised as Eiffel Tower paperweights,
32:29there's a spectacular chase when they are mistakenly sold.
32:35Director Charles Crichton seems to anticipate Hitchcock's vertigo
32:39as Guinness and his accomplice Stanley Holloway begin their descent.
32:44But the pursuit quickly turns into a giddy experience
32:48that feels more like a game than a criminal enterprise.
32:56Why such a sympathetic tone?
32:59Well, like Whiskey Galore, The Lavender Hill Mob
33:02is one of a string of Ealing comedies made in the post-war years
33:06about likeable characters who take on the system.
33:09The producers knew these would resonate
33:11with British audiences stuck with austerity and rationing.
33:15But four years later, when Guinness appeared
33:18as another criminal mastermind in another Ealing comedy,
33:22the tone was more sinister.
33:26Mrs Wilberforce? Yes?
33:28I understand you have rooms to let.
33:34In The Lady Killers, Professor Marcus turns a little old lady's house
33:39into his gang's hideout by pretending they've come to rehearse
33:43as a string quintet.
33:49I thought perhaps before you've all become too absorbed
33:52you and your guests might like a cup of tea.
33:55Oh, you shouldn't.
33:57You know, Professor, you didn't tell me the truth
34:01about yourself and these other gentlemen.
34:05Why, you're not the least bit like amateurs.
34:09You really must be professionals.
34:11It's a brilliant comic conceit,
34:13but the brutally efficient heist jars us out of our comfort zone.
34:18From now on, the twists and turns carry real menace and suspense.
34:26That's whether the gang are drawing lots
34:28to see who'll dispose of the inconvenient Mrs Wilberforce...
34:32Don't get excited.
34:34..or turning on each other in a series of murderous double-crosses.
34:39With its mix of extreme characters, absurdity and cold-blooded violence,
34:44The Lady Killers resembles nothing so much as a Coen brothers film.
34:48And indeed, in 2004, the Coens unveiled their own ill-judged remake,
34:53transposing the story to the American South
34:55and in the process jettisoning the very Britishness
34:58that was the key to the original's success.
35:01We're all going to be, in consequence, very, very incredibly rich.
35:06Ealing had honed their gift for pitch-black humour
35:09in an earlier and equally prescient comedy from 1949.
35:15Used to get a lot of this stuff in the Crimea.
35:18One thing the Ruskies do really well.
35:25In Kindheart and Coronet, Dennis Price plays Louis Mazzini,
35:29murdering his aristocratic relatives one by one
35:32to secure the inheritance he believes is rightfully his.
35:36But what could I do to help them?
35:38What could I take from them?
35:41Except, perhaps, their lives?
35:44Mazzini's calm and calculated plotting
35:47is set against the comic depiction of the Das Coen family.
35:51Admiral Lord Horatio, obstinate to the last,
35:54insisted on going down with his ship.
35:56They're all played, regardless of age and gender, by Alec Guinness
36:00in one of the great turns in British cinema.
36:05Class is the big theme here, with each of the Das Coens
36:08representing a different facet of the British establishment.
36:12And as the vengeful little man,
36:14Mazzini dispatches them with methods ranging from the ingenious
36:18to the absurd.
36:22I shot an arrow in the air.
36:26She fell to earth in Barclay Square.
36:29Like Chaplin's remarkable Monsieur Verdoux a couple of years earlier,
36:33Kindheart and Coronet is a serial killer comedy,
36:36and the sheer variety and inventiveness of its killings
36:39gives it a particularly modern feel.
36:42Dennis Price himself later played a victim
36:45in the ingenious British horror film Theatre of Blood.
36:49The serial killer here is Vincent Price's classical actor,
36:52murdering critics using methods inspired by Shakespeare's plays.
36:57It's a reminder that modern horror has nothing
37:00on the Bard's gory imagination.
37:03Call me Jack.
37:05Murder and comedy have continued to mix in films as diverse
37:08as the flamboyant stage-to-screen adaptation The Ruling Class,
37:12another satire on the aristocracy,
37:15and Benjamin Ross's The Young Poisoner's Handbook,
37:19based on the real-life serial murderer Graham Young.
37:23Graham, where's that medicine? Mum's waiting!
37:25One of the best serial killer satires of recent years
37:28draws on a surprising influence.
37:31You heard about the man, didn't you?
37:33No.
37:35He slipped on the crack and went off the cliff yesterday.
37:38Did you not hear about that? No.
37:40Did he hurt himself?
37:42He had smashed like a pumpkin.
37:45That's why I'd never have a stone floor in.
37:48But I do love that French farmhouse look.
37:50Yeah, it's terrible, isn't it,
37:52when people don't have respect for the power of nature?
37:54Can't find his dog.
37:56Well, he probably committed suicide. Dogs will do that.
38:00Co-written by its stars Alice Lowe and Steve Oram,
38:04Ben Wheatley's Sightseers follows Tina and Chris
38:07on a murderous caravan trip across northern England.
38:11Sightseers plays out like a blood-soaked version
38:14of the classic 1976 TV play Nuts In May,
38:18with its deadpan humour,
38:20misfit characters and acute consciousness of class.
38:26What are you doing?
38:28Mind your own business.
38:30You're not making a fire, are you?
38:32What's it got to do with you?
38:34I just remind you that open fires are not allowed here.
38:37Who said? Did you go to a private school?
38:40That is totally irrelevant, but yes.
38:42So it's the town, it's the entitlement...
38:44I'm entitled to walk in the countryside
38:46without having to encounter dog excrement.
38:48In both cases, a holiday in rural England
38:51unleashes repressed violence in little men.
38:57But perhaps the most incendiary combination of humour and murder
39:01came in Four Lions, Chris Morris' breathtaking 2010 comedy
39:06about a group of incompetent wannabe suicide bombers.
39:10Run!
39:12Hey, brother, faster!
39:14I'm in a world fair show!
39:16You're not faster, brother! You're not too fast!
39:22Brilliantly played by its ensemble cast,
39:24Four Lions is uniquely edgy fare,
39:27uncomfortable in all the right ways
39:30and entertaining in most of the supposedly wrong ones.
39:34GUNSHOT
39:38The humour is often slapstick...
39:41..but it's also heartbreaking.
39:43A scene in which a young father, played by Riz Ahmed,
39:46tries to explain his planned martyrdom
39:49using the language of Disney's Lion King is genuinely astonishing.
39:53Simba would never give up. Exactly.
39:55Exactly so.
39:59Simba kept it all a secret.
40:02And he led Pumbaa and Timon and all his friends,
40:05he led them all, led them all in a fight against Scar.
40:08And he vanquished Scar.
40:10And Simba became the new Lion King.
40:14Yes. Yeah.
40:18Bedtime for you.
40:20Sleep.
40:22While British comedy has a natural affinity
40:25with such dark subject matter,
40:27it can also take on genres much more associated
40:30with big-budget American productions.
40:32This is The Little Man in the form of an entire film,
40:36poking fun at perhaps the biggest authority figure in all of cinema.
40:46All right, I'll come straight to the point, Miss Hype.
40:48You... Yes?
40:52Is there something I can do for you?
40:55Carry On Cleo is one of the high points of the franchise,
40:58and part of the reason it's such an effective pastiche of a Hollywood epic
41:02is the quality of its costumes and sets.
41:05Many of these had actually been created
41:07for the Elizabeth Taylor-Richard Burton Cleopatra
41:10before the US-backed production abandoned Britain and moved to Italy,
41:14leaving the Carry On team to make merry with the spoils.
41:18One can tell more about the quality of merchandise
41:22by examining the backside first.
41:25Carry On Cleo takes specific shots at the Hollywood version,
41:29banking on the audience's familiarity with a production
41:32that had made headlines with its costly excesses.
41:42The irony, of course, is that in Britain,
41:45it's the comedy cash-in that's become the enduring classic,
41:49even finding its way onto a commemorative British stamp.
41:53Carry On Cleo is colourful and visually satisfying,
41:56and at 90 minutes, it's considerably less bum-numbing
41:59than the average Hollywood epic.
42:01And with its Roman-era setting,
42:03it paved the way for one of the greatest comedy stories ever told.
42:08Like its predecessor, Monty Python And The Holy Grail,
42:12Life Of Brian is never less than properly cinematic.
42:16It's so beautifully shot in Tunisia by director of photography Peter Bijoux,
42:21you can feel the heat and the dust.
42:27Anybody else feel like a little...
42:30A little bit of a...
42:32A little bit of a...
42:35Anybody else feel like a little...
42:38Giggle?
42:40When I mention my friend...
42:43Dickus.
42:47Dickus!
42:49Despite essentially being a series of sketches cleverly strung together,
42:54the flawless design, cinematography and music
42:57ensure that the film never feels disjointed.
43:00I'm Spargus!
43:02And there are some obvious parodies of Hollywood epics.
43:05I'm Brian! I'm Brian!
43:08I'm Brian! I'm Brian!
43:11I'm Brian and so's my wife!
43:15And for something completely different,
43:17there's even a just post-Star Wars space opera parody.
43:21Created by Terry Gilliam, it's a tiny film within a film.
43:25And it was a stepping stone
43:27towards Gilliam's even more visually ambitious solo work.
43:33Brazil is a nightmarish tragedy comedy
43:36with Jonathan Pryce as a little man
43:39who literally escapes into his dreams.
43:42He may be a high-flying hero in his fantasies,
43:45but Sam's waking reality has more in common with Norman Wisdom.
43:53Set in a dystopian world with echoes of George Orwell's 1984,
43:57Brazil is staged on a Hollywood scale,
44:00but it was shot in England with a largely British cast.
44:03And it has a very British comic sensibility,
44:06thanks to a script co-written by Charles McEwan and Tom Stoppard.
44:10You look different. Well, I'm two years older.
44:13And she's been to Dr Jaffe.
44:15She doesn't like me telling people, but in fact, she's really pleased.
44:18I knew there was something different.
44:20Remember how they used to stick out?
44:22What? Oh, yes.
44:24Well, rather, I always used to wonder if they were real.
44:29What, my ears?
44:32Like Stanley Kubrick before him, Gilliam was born in America
44:36but has largely lived and worked in Britain.
44:39Throughout Brazil, Gilliam echoes Kubrick
44:42with his stylised use of tracking shots
44:46and symmetrical widescreen compositions.
44:52Note, too, the very clockwork orange feel
44:54to Sam's predicament in this scene.
44:59Gilliam's visual sensibility
45:01also draws on his extensive background in animation.
45:05And that same discipline has given us some of the crown jewels
45:08of British comedy in the shape of Nick Park
45:11and Aardman Animation's Wallace and Gromit series.
45:14The films are packed with homages to famous movies,
45:18including some particularly delightful Hollywood pastiches.
45:22HE GROWLS
45:24This isn't funny!
45:29Daddy created him for good, but he's turned out evil.
45:45One of the most cine-literate contemporary British directors
45:49is Edgar Wright.
45:51His Cornetto trilogy of Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World's End
45:55are among the most successful British comedies of the last two decades.
45:59Want to do something useful?
46:01No.
46:04Well, now what? We'll have to get more stuff.
46:07But that's not just down to how cleverly Wright and co-screenwriter Simon Pegg
46:11play with the tropes of zombie flicks...
46:14No, no, that's the second up I ever bought!
46:16..cop buddy movies and alien invasion films.
46:20Backwards!
46:23It's because these are exhilarating pieces of genre filmmaking
46:27in their own right.
46:29And at their heart, all three films draw on the wellspring of British comedy,
46:34The Little Man, in the shape of Pegg's protagonists.
46:38Shaun is a 20-something slacker with a dead-end job
46:42and a moribund relationship...
46:46OK, has anyone fired a gun before? Oh, yeah. Apart from Ed.
46:50..until a zombie outbreak forces him into unexpected heroism.
46:55As Bertram Russell once said,
46:57the only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.
47:00I think we can all appreciate the relevance of that now.
47:03By contrast, London policeman...
47:05Sorry, police officer Nicholas Angel is an uptight high achiever.
47:10But like Will Hay in O Mr Porter, he's packed off to the back of beyond,
47:15in this case, rural Gloucestershire,
47:17where his partner Nick Frost has to loosen him up.
47:20Have you ever seen Point Break? No.
47:23Amazing bit in Point Break where they jump over a fence.
47:26Is there, no? 29.
47:28Actually, Swayze's just robbed this bank.
47:30Keanu Reeves is chasing him through people's gardens.
47:33And he goes to shoot Swayze, but he can't cos he loves him so much
47:36and he's firing his gun up in the air and it's like...
47:39Have you ever fired your gun up in the air and gone...
47:42No, I have not ever fired my gun up in the air and gone...
47:45After the time-grown successes of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz,
47:48Wright and Pegg both found work in Hollywood itself
47:51before returning to make the third film in the trilogy, The World's End.
47:56Have you got any plans for dinner at all?
47:59Tonight we will be partaking of a liquid repast
48:02as we wend our way up the Golden Mile.
48:04Gary King is the most tragic of Pegg's little men,
48:08a character who wishes he could be 18 forever.
48:12Gary has roped in his old school friends
48:15for an epic pub crawl in a humdrum Home Counties town.
48:20But note Gary's repeated cruciform gestures.
48:24This will be less a night on the lash, more a last supper.
48:29The discovery of an extraterrestrial invasion
48:32prompts some dazzling set pieces, which are both thrilling and comic.
48:42HE GRUNTS
48:47Gary King of the humans?
48:50Yeah? What do you want?
48:53The film's climax sees Gary defend humanity
48:56before a godlike alien intelligence,
48:59and it's here that The World's End gets as close as British comedy does
49:03to a universal truth.
49:05Hey! It is our basic human right to be fuck-ups!
49:09This civilisation was founded on fuck-ups, and you know what?
49:13That makes me proud. And me!
49:16What is it they say? To err is...
49:19To err is human. To err is human!
49:22So, er...
49:25In the end, we're all little men.
49:34I brought you breakfast.
49:36Your sandwich is always put me in a good mood.
49:39Morning, Dr Jeffrey. You haven't forgotten your keys, have you?
49:42You won't find a more cheery portrait of contemporary Britain
49:46than the title sequence of Paddington 2.
49:49Glorious day, Colonel!
49:51It's a beautifully choreographed scene in which our ursine hero
49:54takes an everyday journey through a diverse West London street.
49:58Morning, Paddington. Morning, Mr Barnes.
50:01Bye, Paddington. Au revoir, mademoiselle.
50:03Right. Test me.
50:06Ah, an easy one.
50:08The fluid camerawork suggests a natural ease and unity.
50:12And look at that steam train.
50:17It takes us back to an Ealing comedy made more than 60 years earlier,
50:21the Titfield Thunderbolt.
50:24The community here is very different, but just as idealised.
50:28And again, there's the fluid camerawork
50:31and the glorious bonus of sunny Technicolour film stock.
50:34Morning, Jim. Morning. Good morning.
50:37The Titfield Thunderbolt is perhaps the most heartwarming
50:40of Ealing's comedies.
50:42The story not of a little man, but a little village that comes together
50:45to save a rural railway line threatened with closure.
50:53This scene, in which the passengers band together
50:56to get water for the stricken locomotive...
50:58Sorry, ma'am. Engine's going up.
51:00..is a celebration of collective endeavour
51:02as stirring as any Soviet propaganda film.
51:08And it echoes the famous moment in an earlier Ealing comedy
51:12when the islanders in Whiskey Galore rally round
51:15to illegally salvage a horde of booze from a stricken cargo ship.
51:19We see an equally savvy Scottish community
51:22in Bill Forsyth's wonderful local hero,
51:25secretly plotting to squeeze the best deal
51:28out of the American oil company that wants to buy their land.
51:31All I need just now is Euro-K to negotiate.
51:34I've got an ox man in the book.
51:36Just give her the time to land him in style.
51:39He's got a bag full of money.
51:42So stay calm and let me handle it.
51:45Ealing are masters at feeding our fantasies
51:48of what we'd like Britain to be,
51:50but they also have a knack for preying on our fear
51:53of who we actually are.
51:56That ambiguity is perhaps most evident
51:59in Passport to Pimlico, released in 1949.
52:04The residents of Pimlico in London discover hidden treasure
52:08and documents that free them
52:10from the rationing and restrictions of post-war Britain.
52:13Oh, someone's been saving up for a rainy day.
52:16That's because, as Margaret Rutherford's professor explains,
52:19they're not actually British.
52:21This royal charter has never been revealed.
52:24It is as valid today as on the day it was signed
52:28by the founder of the House of York.
52:31Blimey! I'm a foreigner.
52:34But after a celebratory knees-up and boos-up,
52:37reality quickly dawns on the community.
52:40Black marketeers and mobs of shoppers descend on Pimlico.
52:44What's the idea of mess-up like this?
52:46I've got me dinner to cook.
52:48Don't blame me, madam, if you choose to go abroad to do your shopping.
52:51When a checkpoint and border are put up amongst the bombed-out buildings,
52:55London starts to look more like post-war Berlin,
52:58and the joke doesn't seem that funny any more.
53:01Now I know what Napoleon felt like before Waterloo.
53:04The shift in tone in Passport to Pimlico is deliberate,
53:07but when you look back on the history of British comedy films,
53:10you'll find many moments that are meant to be entertaining
53:14but which now play as anything but,
53:16where the humour reveals some distinctly unfunny prejudices.
53:20Even films like No Limit, Kind Hearts and Coronets,
53:23and I'm Alright, Jack, are marred by moments of casual racism.
53:28You all know what was said in the speech about working with coloured labour?
53:31The next thing you know, we'll have the Black Sea doing our jobs
53:33like they do on the buses in Birmingham.
53:35Thank heaven, then, for those movies which, in recent decades,
53:38have achieved popular success by acknowledging and celebrating
53:42the diversity of modern Britain.
53:44As coordinator of the Saheli Women's Centre,
53:48I'd like to welcome you all to our first Blackpool Illuminations outing.
53:53One of the pioneers was Gurinder Chadha's Bhaji On The Beach,
53:57written by Meera Sayal, which follows a group of British Asian women
54:01on a day trip from Birmingham to Blackpool.
54:03It is not often that we women get away from the patriarchal demands
54:07made on us in our daily lives,
54:09struggling between the double yoke of racism and sexism that we bear.
54:16This is your day. Have a female fun time.
54:19CHILDREN CHEER
54:23The comic hit East Is East was adapted from a successful stage play
54:27by Ayub Khan Din, inspired by his experience of growing up
54:31in a mixed-race household in the 1970s.
54:34They filmed the Dambusters there.
54:36Mum, you say that every time we come to Bradford.
54:39Well, they bloody did.
54:41Unless you're bleeding cheek, no-one asked you to answer back, lady.
54:47You never know what bloody happens, you see.
54:52I come to this country in 1937.
54:56I here maybe one year, and I make a bloody film.
55:01Were you the star, Dad?
55:03Shut it now.
55:05No bloody star, stupid.
55:09I was shouting in a bloody crowd.
55:12I kill bloody English!
55:17As with Bhaji On The Beach, the comedy sits alongside serious subjects
55:22like arranged marriage and domestic abuse.
55:25Sometimes it seems that British Asian characters
55:28have a lot of issues to carry.
55:33But look at Danny Boyle's Yesterday,
55:36a fantasy about a world in which it appears
55:38that only one person remembers the Beatles.
55:41When I find myself in times of trouble...
55:45Himesh Patel's protagonist and his parents,
55:48Meera Sayal and Sanjeev Bhaskar,
55:50are presented as a generic British family.
55:53Oh, it's Terry!
55:55Oh, hello. Terry.
55:57Terry, Jack's just playing us a new song.
56:00Oh, really? I thought he'd given up.
56:02Yeah, well, he's got some new songs. What's this one called?
56:05Leave It Be. Let It Be.
56:07Oh, excellent. Well, rock on, Jack.
56:10It's not very rocky, but...
56:14When I find myself in times of trouble...
56:17Would you like a drink, Terry? Dad!
56:19Well, I'd already heard that bit.
56:21This is a mainstream romantic comedy with a British Asian hero
56:25in which race appears to have been as forgotten
56:27as the Fab Four's back catalogue.
56:30Can comedy capture the richness of multicultural Britain
56:34without falling into stereotyping?
56:36Well, the only way to find out is to encourage more diversity
56:40within the British film industry itself,
56:42to ensure that our stories are not simply told
56:45by the same voices over and over again.
56:54Let's return to where we started
56:56and the personal history of David Copperfield,
56:59directed by Amando Iannucci,
57:01the Glaswegian of Italian immigrant descent.
57:04This is a remarkable day.
57:06It's a delight to see you so liberated.
57:08I'm struck by how Dev Patel
57:10conveys some of the sublime pathos of Chaplin,
57:13the first great British comedy star.
57:15Let's get you back to Whitfield's house. Come on.
57:20Thank you. Thank you.
57:23And whether it's Patel or the supporting ensemble,
57:26the film features fabulously inclusive casting
57:29which fulfils each role according to talent and suitability.
57:36And it absolutely works.
57:38The diversity of the cast captures the kaleidoscopic energy
57:41of Dickens' writing like no other adaptation before it.
57:47David Copperfield takes us back to the foundations of comedy cinema
57:51while pointing toward an exciting future,
57:55which is as good a reason as any
57:57to crack open that crate of whisky, don't worry,
58:00I won't ask where you found it,
58:02and raise a glass to the best of British comedy.
58:05Chin-chin.
58:07To Britain.
58:09Champagne.
58:11Ah!
58:16What is it, bitter?
58:22Pleased to meet you, Mr Patel.
58:24Well, perhaps just a quick one.
58:54Subtitling by SUBS Hamburg