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00:00["Santa Claus is Coming to Town"]
00:18["Santa Claus is Coming to Town"]
00:29I'm a huge maniac!
00:32Whoops. 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! They've all got it in for me!
00:57...to Calendar Girls...
00:58With respect, I didn't hear him use the phrase, whip your bras off.
01:02...Shaun the Sheep...
01:06...to Shaun of the Dead.
01:07And hold it down.
01:09And just kill her off, mate!
01:11We can't resist challenging convention...
01:14Achtung! Guten Tag!
01:16Silence! Sorry.
01:17I shouldn't like to be on the receiving end of that lot.
01:19...and skewering pomposity...
01:22...while casually tossing off a double entendre.
01:25You sit here, Mr Goodes.
01:26Oh, yes.
01:27And I threw a clean napkin in your ring for you.
01:29In Secrets of Cinema, I explore the conventions
01:32which underwrite the movies we love the most
01:35and examine the techniques filmmakers use to keep us coming back for more.
01:41Tonight, I'll show you why making fools of ourselves...
01:45Oh, shut up! Hold on!
01:46...makes for seriously good cinema.
01:55This is Crockwood Trotterfield.
01:57Crockwood Copperfield. Pleased to meet you, Mrs Trotterfield.
02:00The pleasure is all mine.
02:01What do you have in your hand?
02:03It's nothing.
02:04Oh, just a small piece of wool, but all is well.
02:06Follow me.
02:07One of my favourite releases of the last few years
02:10is The Personal History of David Copperfield.
02:12Janet! 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...
02:28Don't keep breeze on!
02:29...to the mordant.
02:31Very ill.
02:32Very ill?
02:33Dangerously ill.
02:34She's dead.
02:36Brilliantly reimagining Dickens' timeless source,
02:39the film conjures a vibrant portrait of Britain...
02:42I'm not down there.
02:44Creditors make that road impossible.
02:46Two tailors and a most unreasonable muffin man.
02:48..with Dev Patel leading an ensemble cast who never miss a beat.
02:53What are you doing?
02:54Medicine. Reviving you.
02:56This is salad dressing.
02:57Is it? I thought it was Armagnac.
02:59David Copperfield draws on a huge reservoir
03:02of British comedy talent,
03:04one that's been more than a century in the making.
03:07In fact, the British comic sensibility
03:09was a formative element of modern cinema.
03:12Charlie Chaplin, a British comedian but an international movie star,
03:17was once the defining image of cinema as a whole
03:20and the most instantly recognisable human being in the world.
03:24Coming 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,
03:32and helped shape screen comedy for decades.
03:35Although Chaplin made the transition to sound,
03:38he didn't want audiences to hear his little tramp speak,
03:41and largely kept to that,
03:43which meant that many of his international fans
03:45didn't know their favourite screen figure had an English accent.
03:50Chaplin was British-born, British-trained
03:53and an utterly British personality,
03:55but his fame and achievements can be laid on Hollywood.
04:01Other British comics, Peter Sellers, Stan Laurel, Elton Bourne, Bob Hope,
04:06have become international figures,
04:09but just as many greats have stayed home,
04:12exploring uniquely British subject matter.
04:15So, what makes a great comic actor?
04:18Matron? What is it? What do you want?
04:22Let'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,
04:33how 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
04:47or 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.
05:00Then there are those who are funny thanks to clever writing
05:03and 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,
05:17playing three very different characters.
05:20Mr President, I would not rule out the chance
05:24to preserve a nucleus of human specimens.
05:27It would be quite easy.
05:30HE CHUCKLES
05:32At the bottom of some of our deeper mineshafts.
05:37Sellers was following in the footsteps of his hero, Alec Guinness.
05:42That was Admiral Lord Horatio Descoyne.
05:44Who 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 somebody didn't want me
06:20to come to Northampton... 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, Toto.
06:41Toto.
06:43It'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.
06:56Finished.
06:58Marvellous.
06:59Dudley 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.
07:20Prepare 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,
07:58including Edgar Wright...
08:01..Paul King...
08:06Ah!
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
08:28to become the highest-grossing film in UK box office history.
08:32But beyond the talent that underpins British comedy cinema,
08:36there are particular themes that we return to again and again,
08:40situations and characters that reveal
08:43our national preoccupations and obsessions.
08:46And at the heart of all of this is a recurrent figure
08:49who's both all-important and entirely unimportant.
08:58The Tramp may have been an American production,
09:01but in it, Charlie Chaplin established the basic archetype
09:04of British comedy, the little man,
09:07the indefatigable spirit who keeps struggling
09:10as everything stacks up against him,
09:13whether it's bullies, authority figures,
09:16his own ineptitude or simply malign fate itself.
09:21Even if they win out in the end,
09:23this character type is a perennial underdog
09:26and the British have embraced such creatures with open arms,
09:29creating some of the biggest box office stars in this country's history.
09:33Going to write it, George?
09:35What do you think he's going to do, milk it?
09:37George Formby's first big hit was 1935's No Limit.
09:41That streamline, that is.
09:43Sassy.
09:44Why? Don't you believe me?
09:46If you swear to it, finger wet, finger dry.
09:49Finger wet, finger dry.
09:51He gives the little man a distinctly Lancastrian spin
09:54as a Wigan chimney sweep who dreams of victory in the Isle of Man TT.
10:03Formby may not have had Chaplin's silent-era expressiveness,
10:07but he did have a handy little instrument
10:09and a certain sense of humour that he could use.
10:13Formby also had a gift for physical comedy.
10:28And he followed in the footsteps of Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton
10:31by performing some of his own stunts.
10:35Including motorcycle shots for No Limit's climactic race.
10:51It's said that Chaplin's own favourite clown was Norman Wisdom,
10:55and Norman Wisdom was one of Chaplin's favourite clowns.
11:00It's said that Chaplin's own favourite clown was Norman Wisdom,
11:04another master of physical comedy.
11:09And the biggest star in British cinema from the mid-'50s to the early-'60s.
11:14Wisdom is at his most Chaplin-esque in a pathos-filled early hit,
11:19One Good Turn.
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 gets 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.
12:24More recently, in Mike Lee's Happy Go Lucky,
12:27Sally Hawkins is perfectly cast as Poppy,
12:30whose 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.
12:40It was in the Cadillac in Miami, bunny hop down the beach.
12:43I was a bit pissed. It was Larry's.
12:45Other incarnations of the little man include a bear...
12:49Paddington! 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.
13:04What? ..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
13:20of pompous and petty authority figures,
13:22and 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.
13:35That's enough of that!
13:39Who do you think you are?
13:40We're the local defence volunteers,
13:42and I'm their appointed commander, Captain Manning.
13:44And I must ask you to keep your hands off my privates.
13:47Captain Mannering was partly inspired
13:49by Will Hayes' titular character in the 1937 comedy O Mr Porter,
13:54an officious railway worker who's packed off
13:56to run the remote Northern Irish station of Buggles Kelly.
14:01How did that happen?
14:03Do you know where you sent those facts?
14:05Here, down there! You've done it!
14:12Well, we've got the carriage anyway.
14:14You can see an even closer relative of Mannering
14:17in Alexander McKendrick's Whisky Galore.
14:20Basil Radford's Captain Waggot
14:22runs the Home Guard on the Scottish island of Toddy.
14:25It's not good enough, you know.
14:26Every time they move that roadblock, it's longer than the last.
14:29How do you account for that?
14:30Well, I wouldn't say they were doing too badly, sir.
14:33It's pretty heavy going, you know.
14:34All right, Sergeant, we'll see it again.
14:36Right once again, men, move!
14:37Like Porter, he's a bossy Englishman far from England
14:41and out of his depth.
14:42It's very discouraging.
14:44Yes, sir.
14:45Just one point it did strike me, sir.
14:47What's that?
14:49Well, sir, if this is the only road round the island,
14:52all the Germans need to do in theory
14:54would be to turn around and come here the other way.
14:59Yes.
15:00I was wondering when you were going to think of that.
15:03You should have pointed that out to me before, Mr Campbell.
15:06You'll find little men with big egos in all walks of life,
15:11acting...
15:13Bastard asking me to understudy Constantine and the Seagull.
15:19I'm not going to understudy anybody.
15:21Especially that little pimp.
15:23Broadcasting...
15:25I was having a fascinating conversation
15:27with the proud father of Norfolk's most suntanned child.
15:31Just passed his details on to the social services.
15:34The time is 11.59.55 seconds.
15:37Midday.
15:38Well, no, well, yeah, it is now.
15:41These characters constantly struggle against a world
15:44that 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.
16:11WHISTLING
16:14Oh, you temptress.
16:17Oh, you voluptuous Jezebel.
16:20My Aphrodite.
16:22What carnal desires did you stir in the breasts of helpless men?
16:25Devoid of talent but benefiting from a series of misunderstandings,
16:29Hancock becomes the toast of the Paris arts scene.
16:32A smile, please.
16:34This way, Monsieur, please.
16:36Down here, Monsieur.
16:37According to screenwriters Ray Galton and Alan Simpson,
16:40no less than Lucian Freud said
16:42The Rebel was the best film about modern art ever made.
16:45Perhaps 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.
16:58MUSIC PLAYS
17:05So, where shall we sit, darling?
17:07Well, why don't I go at the head here and Frances...
17:10I'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.
17:25She picks the boys she thinks we're going to find the most shocking.
17:30Politics.
17:32It'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 fire brand.
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,
18:10often through conflict between the classes,
18:13but 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?
18:24Whithnell may look dishevelled, but he's also probably
18:27the poshest person in 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.
18:35Balls. We want the finest wines available to humanity.
18:39We want them here and we want them now.
18:42Miss Blenner has it. Telephone the police.
18:45But it's easier to root for an underdog
18:47if they weren't born with a silver spoon in their mouth.
18:50You can see why George Formby would appeal to a largely
18:53working-class 1930s audience as a chimney sweep
18:56who wins the heart of middle-class Florence Desmond.
19:00I hope we're going to have some nice weather.
19:02I've come all the way from London.
19:04I can tell that by the daft way you speak.
19:06Thank you. Oh, you're welcome.
19:08I come from Flagdyke.
19:10Ain't lad I could tell that by the daft way you look.
19:13That's one to you, isn't it? Ow!
19:15I'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? I'm quite sorry.
19:37Inverting the upwardly mobile George Formby model,
19:40Ian Carmichael is the upper-class innocent
19:43forklift 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?
19:55Frightfully sorry.
19:57I'm afraid I haven't quite got this thing buttoned up yet.
20:00What's your name? Windrush.
20:03Oh. 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.
20:11All 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, even 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.
20:45All right. Finish it, Fork.
20:48Give us a call, love, eh?
20:50This is unbelievable. I never thought we'd get this backing.
20:53It's got an inspiring feel-good factor,
20:55more typical of recent comedies
20:57than those made in the period it depicts.
20:59Hold on, girls.
21:01We're not entirely unfurled, look.
21:04CHEERING
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.
21:22Where are you supposed to go for a crap?
21:24Put bicycles on, shit yourself.
21:26Listen, Larry, your blood is stupid.
21:28Do you know where to go? Up the floor, floor,
21:31onto the scaffold and into the show flat.
21:33We're always bloody using it.
21:35Actual former builder Ricky Tomlinson
21:37starred in Loach's 1991 riff-raff,
21:40which follows low-paid construction workers
21:42building luxury flats that they could never dream of affording.
21:47Loach shows his flair for comic timing in a perfect set piece
21:51that's also a droll comment on the London property market.
21:54The bathroom here, which I think you'll find very impressive.
21:58SHE GASPS
22:00THEY ARGUE
22:06Who are you?
22:08Get out of there!
22:12Everything seems to be working.
22:15Loach's bathroom moment unexpectedly echoes a scene
22:18in A Fish Called Wanda,
22:20a film from a completely different milieu
22:22that nonetheless shares a key trait of British comedy.
22:25Look, look!
22:31Being caught with your pants down is the stuff of British nightmares,
22:35whatever your wealth or class.
22:41So it's interesting that two of the most popular British comedies
22:45from the last 25 years see very different sets of characters
22:49shedding social convention by shedding their clothes.
22:52Are we all right?
22:55Taking his kit off?
22:58I thought you were turning me into a fancy dancer.
23:00Listen, ladies, we are strippers, aren't we?
23:03What, here? Now? In this house?
23:07This is a good area, this is.
23:12Of course, The Full Monty isn't just about working-class men
23:15losing their inhibitions,
23:17but about trying to find dignity and purpose
23:20in post-industrial Sheffield.
23:25CHEERING
23:28Right. No. I've got to go anyway.
23:31Then there are the middle-class women of Napley,
23:34spurred on by tragedy to bare their flesh for charity.
23:40No, not yet, wait. Let me just take one of the tables.
23:43We'll sell them on the calendars.
23:45Is that the one I told you about? Yeah, but be very sensitive.
23:48Right.
23:50Can anyone see my nipples?
23:52The central joke in both Calendar Girls and The Full Monty
23:55is that, for all the undressing,
23:57the furthest thing from the characters' minds
24:00is a subject around which British comedy has danced
24:03with embarrassment for decades.
24:14Now I go in the cleaning to earn an honest bob
24:18For an Aussie Parker it's an interesting job
24:21It's often been noted that the defining factor
24:24of most British sex comedies
24:26is that they're neither sexy nor funny.
24:35Yet, since the days of George Formby,
24:37British cinema has been coyly making f'nar f'nar jokes
24:41about a subject we cannot bear to face head-on.
24:44Sex only really became an acknowledged theme
24:47in British comedy films
24:49and social attitudes relaxed in the 60s.
24:52Films like The Knack, from American émigré director Richard Lester,
24:56found the little man asking more openly
24:59what had previously remained unsaid.
25:02Would 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.
25:16One's body needs protein and energy-giving substances.
25:19I 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.
25:50Hi.
25:52Oh, what a lovely-looking pair.
25:54Took the words right out of my mouth.
25:56LAUGHTER
26:00I am a well-known and practising doctor.
26:03In the artistic and beautiful picture which now follows,
26:07you will see naked men and women
26:09engaged in the various arts of sexual love.
26:13Later, Carry On At Your Convenience
26:15parodied the educational sex films
26:18that became voguish in the late 60s and early 70s.
26:21Great joy and pleasure.
26:23God, you don't miss a trick, do you?
26:26Oh!
26:28While the Carry On films relied largely upon suggestion and innuendo,
26:32they paved the way for a sub-genre of highly profitable films
26:36mixing broad comedy with soft-core nudity
26:40and that bizarrely came to embody
26:42the cultural landscape of 70s Britain.
26:45And the genre's defining hit was the spiritual descendant
26:49of George Formby's most famous song.
26:52MUSIC PLAYS
26:55Favourite gear is a white nylon T-shirt
26:57cos when you wet it, you can press it up against the window.
27:00Confessions Of A Window Cleaner was less of a departure
27:03from British comedy tradition than you might think.
27:06Carol! What?
27:08It was helmed by veteran director Val Guest,
27:11whose early credits include co-writing Oh, Mr Porter.
27:14Just 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.
27:41Knickers?
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 triggered
27:58a 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.
28:10You've got to give the public what it wants.
28:12I did a film a few years ago, it was called Midnight Forever.
28:15Midnight Forever?
28:16That wasn't the Philip Marceau picture about the Spanish Civil War, was it?
28:19No, this was about lesbianism in a convent.
28:21It didn't take a cent.
28:22Directed by Martin Campbell, later of GoldenEye and Casino Royale fame,
28:26Eskimo Nell poked fun at clean-up campaigners
28:30like Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford.
28:34The characters dupe Lady Longhorn into funding their sex film
28:39by pretending it's a wholesome family drama.
28:42This is Harris Tweedle. He's writing the script.
28:45I've heard so much about you from Dennis already,
28:48it does sound exciting.
28:53And who's interested in birds, then?
28:56That's Harris. He's into birds.
28:58Such a charming hobby.
29:00My late husband was a keen ornithologist.
29:03He specialised in tits.
29:06Perhaps the most unexpected and gritty British outing
29:10was 1987's Rita Sue and Bob Too.
29:13This still-controversial black comedy
29:16was adapted by screenwriter Andrea Dunbar from her own stage plays.
29:22I'll give you two a ride round for half an hour, will you, ma'am?
29:25No.
29:26A story about the relationship between two teenage girls
29:30and a married man would be queasy in pretty much anyone else's hands,
29:34but Dunbar, who died at only 29, had a truly authentic voice.
29:39Can either of you two put a Jurex on?
29:42What's a Jurex? I think you mean to rub a Johnny.
29:45That's right.
29:46Well, what do you call him rubbing Johnny's Jurex for?
29:49Jurex is proper name for him.
29:51Oh, I didn't know. Never had any use for him myself.
29:55Can you put one on?
29:57I wouldn't know what to do with one.
29:59Dunbar had been a teenage mother herself
30:01and lived on an estate in Bradford where much of the film was shot.
30:05Bob's really nice, isn't he?
30:09He's the sort of fella I could live with,
30:11as long as he weren't doing with me what he's doing with his wife.
30:14You can't expect anything else, can you?
30:17God, if I had a fella like him, I'd expect him to do it.
30:20You mean to tell me you wouldn't be bothered
30:23if he was going without glasses he could get?
30:25Well, what you don't know don't hurt you.
30:27Does it?
30:28Rita Sue and Bob Too's mix of sex, humour and tough social realism
30:33remains rare in modern British cinema.
30:36But its frank attitude towards female sexuality
30:39paved the way for the more glossy rom-coms
30:42that would become a highly exportable staple
30:45of the British film industry.
30:47The whole truth.
30:48Equally important, we'll find nice, sensible boyfriends
30:51to go out with and not continue to form romantic attachments
30:54to any of the following.
30:55Alcoholics, workaholics, commitment phobics, peeping toms,
30:58megalomaniacs, emotional fuckwits or perverts.
31:01Bridget Jones's Diary, directed by Sharon Maguire
31:04from Helen Fielding's celebrated book,
31:06talks directly and entertainingly about sex without actually showing it.
31:11Yes, Bridget?
31:12That thing you just did is actually illegal in several countries.
31:15That is, of course, the major reason I'm so thrilled
31:17to 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.
31:27I 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.
31:41MUSIC PLAYS
31:46Most men who long to be rich know inwardly
31:49that they will never achieve their ambition.
31:52But I was in the unique position of having a fortune
31:55literally 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.
32:10Of course, as we know from our secrets of cinema on heist movies,
32:14the genre is full of ironies and reversals,
32:17and The Lavender Hill Mob makes much of their comic potential.
32:23After the gold is melted down and smuggled to France,
32:26disguised as Eiffel Tower paperweights,
32:28there's a spectacular chase when they are mistakenly sold.
32:34Director Charles Crichton seems to anticipate
32:37Hitchcock's vertigo as Guinness and his accomplice Stanley Holloway
32:41begin 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 healing comedies made in the post-war years
33:06about likeable characters who take on the system.
33:10The producers knew these would resonate with British audiences
33:13stuck with austerity and rationing.
33:16But four years later, when Guinness appeared as another criminal mastermind
33:21in another healing comedy, the tone was more sinister.
33:27Mrs Wilberforce? Yes?
33:29I 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 about yourself.
34:02And these other gentlemen...
34:04Why, you're not the least bit like amateurs.
34:08You really must be professionals.
34:10It's a brilliant comic conceit,
34:12but the brutally efficient heist jars us out of our comfort zone.
34:17From now on, the twists and turns carry real menace and suspense.
34:25That's whether the gang are drawing lots
34:27to see who'll dispose of the inconvenient Mrs Wilberforce
34:31Don't get excited!
34:33or turning on each other in a series of murderous double crosses.
34:38With its mix of extreme characters, absurdity and cold-blooded violence,
34:43The Lady Killers resembles nothing so much as a Coen brothers film.
34:47And indeed, in 2004, the Coens unveiled their own ill-judged remake,
34:52transposing 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.
35:00You're all going to be, in consequence, very, very incredibly rich.
35:05Ealing had honed their gift for pitch-black humour
35:08in an earlier and equally prescient comedy from 1949.
35:14Used to get a lot of this stuff in the Crimea.
35:17One thing the Ruskies do really well.
35:20EXPLOSION
35:24In Kindheart and Coronet, Dennis Price plays Louis Mazzini,
35:28murdering his aristocratic relatives one by one
35:31to secure the inheritance he believes is rightfully his.
35:35What could I do to hurt them?
35:37What could I take from them?
35:40Except, perhaps, their lives.
35:43Mazzini's calm and calculated plotting
35:46is set against the comic depiction of the Das Coen family.
35:50Admiral Lord Horatio, obstinate to the last,
35:53insisted on going down with his ship.
35:55They're all played, regardless of age and gender, by Alec Guinness
35:59in one of the great turns in British cinema.
36:04Class is the big theme here, with each of the Das Coens
36:07representing a different facet of the British establishment.
36:11And as the vengeful little man,
36:13Mazzini dispatches them with methods ranging from the ingenious
36:17to the absurd.
36:21I shot an arrow in the air.
36:25She fell to earth in Barclay Square.
36:28Like Chaplin's remarkable Monsieur Verdoux a couple of years earlier,
36:32Kindheart and Coronet is a serial killer comedy,
36:35and the sheer variety and inventiveness of its killings
36:38gives it a particularly modern feel.
36:41Dennis Price himself later played a victim
36:44in the ingenious British horror film Theatre of Blood.
36:47The serial killer here is Vincent Price's classical actor,
36:52murdering critics using methods inspired by Shakespeare's plays.
36:56It's a reminder that modern horror has nothing
36:59on the Bard's gory imagination.
37:02Call me Jack.
37:04Murder and comedy have continued to mix in films as diverse
37:07as the flamboyant stage-to-screen adaptation The Ruling Class,
37:11another satire on the aristocracy,
37:14and Benjamin Ross's The Young Poisoner's Handbook,
37:19based on the real-life serial murderer Graham Young.
37:22Graham, 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.
37:48Although I do love that French farmhouse look.
37:51Yeah, it's terrible, isn't it, when people don't have respect
37:53for the power of nature? Can'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, misfit characters
38:21and 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.
38:42It's not so, it's the town, it's the entitlement.
38:44I'm entitled to walk in the countryside
38:46without having to encounter dog excrement.
38:49In both cases, a holiday in rural England
38:52unleashes repressed violence in little men.
38:58But perhaps the most incendiary combination of humour and murder
39:02came in Four Lions, Chris Morris' breathtaking 2010 comedy
39:07about 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 so 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, 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.
40:09And he vanquished Scar.
40:11And Simba became the new Lion King.
40:15Yes. Yeah.
40:19Bedtime for you.
40:23While British comedy has a natural affinity
40:26with such dark subject matter,
40:28it can also take on genres much more associated
40:31with big-budget American productions.
40:33This is The Little Man in the form of an entire film,
40:37poking fun at perhaps the biggest authority figure in all of cinema.
40:47All right, I'll come straight to the point, Miss Knight.
40:49You... Yes?
40:53Is there something I can do for you?
40:55SNORING
40:57Carry On Cleo is one of the high points of the franchise,
41:00and part of the reason it's such an effective pastiche of a Hollywood epic
41:04is the quality of its costumes and sets.
41:07Many of these had actually been created
41:09for the Elizabeth Taylor Richard Burton Cleopatra
41:12before the US-backed production abandoned Britain and moved to Italy,
41:16leaving the Carry On team to make merry with the spoils.
41:20One can tell more about the quality of merchandise
41:23by examining the backside first.
41:26Carry On Cleo takes specific shots at the Hollywood version,
41:30banking on the audience's familiarity with a production
41:33that had made headlines with its costly excesses.
41:43The irony, of course, is that in Britain,
41:46it'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.
42:16Like its predecessor, Monty Python and the Holy Grail,
42:20Life of Brian is never less than properly cinematic.
42:23It's so beautifully shot in Tunisia by director of photography Peter Bijoux,
42:28you can feel the heat and the dust.
42:35Anybody else feel like a little...
42:38..giggle...
42:40..when I mention my friend...
42:43..Dickus?
42:46Dickus!
42:49Despite essentially being a series of sketches cleverly strung together,
42:53the flawless design, cinematography and music
42:56ensure that the film never feels disjointed.
43:01There are some obvious parodies of Hollywood epics.
43:04I'm Brian! I'm Brian!
43:07I'm Brian! I'm Brian!
43:10I'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 towards Gilliam's
43:27even more visually ambitious solo work.
43:34Brazil is a nightmarish, tragicomedy,
43:37with Jonathan Pryce as a little man who literally escapes into his dreams.
43:43He may be a high-flying hero in his fantasies,
43:46but Sam's waking reality has more in common with Norman Wisdom.
43:54Set in a dystopian world with echoes of George Orwell's 1984,
43:58Brazil is staged on a Hollywood scale,
44:01but it was shot in England with a largely British cast.
44:04And it has a very British comic sensibility,
44:07thanks to a script co-written by Charles McEwan and Tom Stoppard.
44:11You look different. Well, I'm two years older.
44:14And she's been to Dr Jaffe.
44:16She doesn't like me telling people, but, in fact, she's really pleased.
44:19I knew there was something different.
44:21Remember how they used to stick out?
44:23What?
44:25Oh, yes. Well, rather.
44:27I always used to wonder if they were real.
44:29What, my ears?
44:33Like Stanley Kubrick before him, Gilliam was born in America,
44:37but has largely lived and worked in Britain.
44:40Throughout Brazil, Gilliam echoes Kubrick
44:43with his stylised use of tracking shots
44:46and symmetrical widescreen compositions.
44:52Note, too, the very clockwork orange feel
44:55to Sam's predicament in this scene.
44:59Gilliam's visual sensibility
45:01also draws on his extensive background in animation,
45:04and 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.
45:30Daddy created him for good, but he's turned out evil.
45:39HE GROANS
45:46One 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?
46:04Well, now what? We'll have to get more stuff.
46:07But that's not just down to how cleverly Wright and co-screenwriter
46:11Simon Pegg play with the tropes of zombie flicks...
46:14No, no, that's the second apple I ever bought!
46:17..cop buddy movies and alien invasion films.
46:21Backwards!
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
46:33of British comedy, The 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.
46:49Until a zombie outbreak forces him into unexpected heroism.
46:54As Bertram Russell once said,
46:56the only thing that will redeem mankind is co-operation.
46:59I think we can all appreciate the relevance of that now.
47:02By contrast, London policeman...
47:04Sorry, police officer Nicholas Angel is an uptight high-achiever.
47:09But like Will Hay and O Mr Porter, he's packed off to the back of beyond,
47:14in this case, rural Gloucestershire,
47:16where new partner Nick Frost has to loosen him up.
47:19Have you ever seen Point Break?
47:21No. Amazing bit in Point Break where they jump over a fence.
47:25Is there, no? 29.
47:27Paddy Swayze's just robbed this bank.
47:29Keanu Reeves is chasing him through people's gardens.
47:31And he goes to shoot Swayze but he can't cos he loves him so much
47:34and he's firing his gun up in the air and he's like...
47:37Have you ever fired your gun up in the air and gone...
47:40No, I have not ever fired my gun up in the air and gone...
47:43Alongside the home-grown successes of Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz,
47:47Wright and Pegg both found work in Hollywood itself
47:50before returning to make the third film in the trilogy, The World's End.
47:55Have you got any plans for dinner at all?
47:58Tonight we will be partaking of a liquid repast
48:01as we wend our way up the Golden Mile.
48:03Gary King is the most tragic of Pegg's little men,
48:07a character who wishes he could be 18 forever.
48:14Gary has roped in his old school friends
48:16for an epic pub crawl in a humdrum Home Counties town.
48:21But note Gary's repeated cruciform gestures.
48:25This will be less a night on the lash, more a last supper.
48:30The discovery of an extraterrestrial invasion
48:33prompts some dazzling set pieces which are both thrilling and comic.
48:47Gary King of the humans?
48:50Yeah. What do you want?
48:52The film's climax sees Gary defend humanity
48:55before a god-like alien intelligence,
48:58and 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!
49:08This civilisation was founded on fuck-ups, and you know what?
49:12That makes me proud. And me!
49:15What is it they say? To err is...
49:18To err is human. To err is human!
49:21So, err...
49:24In the end, we're all little men.
49:33I brought you breakfast.
49:35Thank you. Your sandwich is always put me in a good mood.
49:38Morning, Dr Jeffrey. You haven't forgotten your keys, have you?
49:41You won't find a more cheery portrait of contemporary Britain
49:45than the title sequence of Paddington 2.
49:48Glorious day, Colonel.
49:50It's a beautifully choreographed scene
49:52in which our ursine hero takes an everyday journey
49:55through a diverse West London street.
49:57Morning, Paddington. Morning, Mr Barnes.
50:00Bye, Paddington. Oh, what a man we're in.
50:02Right. Test me.
50:04What's the quickest way from Baker Street to Big Ben?
50:07Ah, an easy one.
50:08The fluid camera work suggests a natural ease and unity.
50:12And look at that steam train.
50:15It takes us back to an Ealing comedy made more than 60 years earlier,
50:20The Titfield Thunderbolt.
50:23The community here is very different, but just as idealised.
50:27And again, there's the fluid camera work
50:30and the glorious bonus of sunny Technicolour film stock.
50:34Morning. Good morning.
50:36The Titfield Thunderbolt is perhaps the most heart-warming
50:39of Ealing's comedies, the story not of a little man,
50:42but a little village that comes together
50:44to save a rural railway line threatened with closure.
50:52This scene, in which the passengers band together
50:55to get water for the stricken locomotive...
50:57Sorry, ma'am, engine's going up.
50:59..is a celebration of collective endeavour
51:02as stirring as any Soviet propaganda film.
51:08And it echoes the famous moment
51:10in 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 you're OK to negotiate.
51:34I've got an ox man on the hook.
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.
51:55That ambiguity is perhaps most evident
51:58in Passport To Pimlico, released in 1949.
52:04The residents of Pimlico in London discover hidden treasure
52:07and documents that free them
52:09from the rationing and restrictions of post-war Britain.
52:12Oh, someone's been saving up for a rainy day.
52:15That's because, as Margaret Rutherford's professor explains,
52:18they're not actually British.
52:20This royal charter has never been revealed.
52:23It is as valid today as on the day it was signed
52:27by the founder of the House of York.
52:30Blimey! I'm a foreigner.
52:33But after a celebratory knees-up
52:36and boos-up, reality quickly dawns on the community.
52:40Black marketeers and mobs of shoppers descend on Pimlico.
52:44What's the idea of messing up like this? I've got my dinner to cook.
52:47Don't blame me, madam, if you choose to go abroad to do your shopping.
52:50When a checkpoint and border are put up amongst the bombed-out buildings,
52:54London starts to look more like post-war Berlin,
52:57and the joke doesn't seem that funny any more.
53:00Now I know what Napoleon felt like before Waterloo.
53:03The 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
53:13but 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.
53:45As coordinator of the Saheli Women's Centre,
53:48I'd like to welcome you all to our first Blackpool Illuminations outing.
53:54One of the pioneers was Gurinder Chadha's Bhaji on the Beach,
53:57written by Meera Sayal,
53:59which follows a group of British-Asian women
54:01on a day trip from Birmingham to Blackpool.
54:04It is not often that we women get away from the patriarchal demands
54:08made on us in our daily lives,
54:10struggling between the double yoke of racism and sexism that we bear.
54:17This is your day. Have a female fun time.
54:21Yeah!
54:25The comic hit East Is East was adapted from a successful stage play
54:28by Ayub Khan Din,
54:30inspired by his experience of growing up in a mixed-race household
54:33in the 1970s.
54:35They filmed the Dambusters there.
54:37Mum, you say that every time we come to Bradford.
54:40Well, they bloody did.
54:42Unless you're bleeding cheek, no-one asked you to answer back, lady.
54:49You never know what bloody happens, you see.
54:53I come to this country in 1937.
54:58I here maybe one year, and I make a bloody film.
55:03Were you the star, Dad?
55:05Shut it, now!
55:07No bloody stars, Jupiter.
55:09I was shouting in a bloody crowd.
55:13I kill bloody English!
55:18As 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.
55:34But look at Danny Boyle's Yesterday,
55:36a fantasy about a world in which it appears
55:39that only one person remembers the Beatles.
55:46Himesh Patel's protagonist and his parents,
55:49Meera Sayal and Sanjeev Bhaskar,
55:51are presented as a generic British family.
55:54Oh, it's Terry!
55:56Oh, Terry!
55:58Jack'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.
56:04What's this one called?
56:06Leave It Be. Oh, excellent.
56:08Well, 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.
56:21It's a mainstream romantic comedy with a British-Asian hero
56:25in which race appears to have been as forgotten
56:28as the Fab Four's back catalogue.
56:30Can comedy capture the richness of multicultural Britain
56:34without falling into stereotyping?
56:37Well, the only way to find out is to encourage more diversity
56:40within the British film industry itself,
56:43to ensure that our stories are not simply told
56:46by the same voices over and over again.
56:49Feed on! Feed on!
56:51Up, up, up!
56:53Let's return to where we started
56:55and the personal history of David Copperfield,
56:58directed by Amando Iannucci,
57:00a Glaswegian of Italian immigrant descent.
57:03This is a remarkable day.
57:05It's a delight to see you so liberated.
57:07I'm struck by how Dev Patel conveys some of the sublime pathos
57:11of Chaplin, the first great British comedy star.
57:14Let's get you back to Wickfield's house. Come on.
57:18Ugh!
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
57:42of 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 to crack open that crate of whisky,
57:59don't worry, I 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?
58:21Pleased to meet you, Mr Patel.
58:25Well, perhaps just a quick one.
58:46CHAMPAGNE