Spend The Night: With 70's Brit-com spin offs

Please Sir! (1971. Dir. Mike Vickers) / Dad’s Army (1971. Dir. Norman Cohen)

No self respecting 1970s sitcom was without it’s spin-off movie. Many of them were, frankly, poor and a sorry litany of underachievers includes ‘On The Busses’ (which had three film outings, each one more dreadful than the previous), ‘Steptoe & Son’, ‘Bless This House’, ‘Rising Damp’ (one of the best UK sitcoms ever but whose drab and claustrophobic setting simply didn’t work on the big screen) and ‘George & Mildred’. The honour of being possibly the worst of all goes to Are You Being Served? in which the Grace Brother’s staff go on a package holiday to Spain and....oh dear.Not all Sitcom tie-ins were dreadful. The Likely Lads and Til Death Us Do Part are hugely enjoyable films in their own right and stand up to the test of time. And ‘Porridge’, a sitcom even less likely to translate to the screen than Rising Damp due to its incarcerated setting, is an absolute joy of a movie.But, arguably, the best of all 70’s sitcom spin-offs was Dad’s Army in which the brave but bumbling Home Guard platoon fend off a German invasion of Warmington-on-Sea. There are numerous reasons why Dad’s Army worked so well on the big screen not least because writers Croft & Perry’s characters were already fully formed in the hearst and minds of the viewers and were absolutely perfectly, beautifully portrayed. Comedy isn’t just about timing, casting is of the essence. On TV the show was set bound and reliant on the interplay between the pompous Captain Mainwaring and his platoon of poltroons. The film gave the story a wider scope affording the action to take place in countryside and village settings that even by 1971 hadn’t changed too much since the 40s. Dad’s Army - although still funny to 21st century eyes - tapped into a still raw British nerve about the war and the fact that all that stood between us and the Nazis was the English Channel and a thin green line of pensioners and feckless draft dodgers. Part of its enduring success is that it has always been viewed with a mix of affection and skin of our teeth relief. And, of course, the dialogue is still yet to be bettered.
Cpt. Mainwaring (on an impending invasion by the German army): I could have sworn that they would never break through the Maginot line. Sgt.Wilson: Quite right sir, they didn't. Cpt.Mainwaring: I'm a pretty good judge of these matters you know Wilson. Sgt.Wilson: They went round the side. Cpt.Mainwaring: I see... they what! Sgt. Wilson: They went round the side. Cpt. Mainwaring: That's a typical shabby Nazi trick, you see the sort of people we're up against Wilson. Sgt. Wilson: Most unreliable sir.
But looking back the general rule of thumb seems to be that a show’s success on television (and this was at a time when viewing figures for sitcoms where in multiples of millions) is not a guarantee of a blockbuster. Cinematic features differ enormously from TV shows and the likes of Rising Damp and Please Sir! were weighed down with exposition and back story before a feature plot could truly develop, resulting in a flabby and incohesive 90 minutes. Often as not, Bless This House for example, the result was a film that felt like it was three episodes of a sitcom strung together. They also almost all date very quickly.Please Sir! was the brash ITV sitcom set in the tough working class London school Fenn Street Secondary Modern. John Alderton was the shy, idealistic, bumbling but big hearted teacher Bernard Hedges who between 1968 and 1972 tried to bring order to the blackboard jungle with comic results. As 5Cs form tutor (5C being played by a cast of actors who all looked like they’d left real school a decade earlier) he tried to instil a love of learning in his charges but was often left frustrated. The fact that his teaching colleagues were a collection of egotists, ditherers and idiots hardly helped. Nonetheless Hedges was fondly regarded by his pupils who would often try and help him out of the awkward situations he found himself in. This being a sitcom we should all be aware of what route their good intentions were paving. The show, inspired by the 1967 film To Sir With Love, was an instant hit and the feature film three years into its run was inevitable. Sadly it was also inevitably lacking.In the film Hedges takes his class on a trip to an outward bounds centre where the cockney fishes out of water run into trouble with a class from a posh school, fall in with a band of gypsies, abscond to the village pub and get accused of a crime they didn’t commit. There are a few laughs - mainly supplied by the esteemed Joan Sanderson, Fenn Streets pompous headmistress and the brilliant Derek Guyler as the quasi fascist school caretaker Norman Potter, basically a repeat of his Sykes character, police constable Corky - but by taking the characters out of the classroom most of the comic potential is lost. Still, as a period piece it’s full of bright 70s fashions and attitudes and makes an interesting diversion of a lunchtime. School-movie trivia fans may be interested to learn that Lulu who starred in and provided the lovely theme tune to Sir With Love also sings the closing song of Please Sir!

The Food: For a true 70’s TV dinner serve up Bird’s Eye frozen beefburgers with peas and chips (fried in a dangerously overflowing chip pan) followed by Arctic Roll.

The Drink: White’s lemonade or get ‘fizzical’ with a bottle of Corona. Take the bottles back to the Off Licence and keep the deposit money.