A slow-action and grimly humourless replay of Carry On Sergeant, Carry On England misjudges the saucy seaside charm of the franchise and, in an attempt to keep pace with comedy trends, replaces it with on-the-nose smut and low-level sex action playing out like a misguided, mash-up episode of Dad's Army and It Ain't Half Hot Mum. Even with the ever-enthusiastic Windsor Davies and Melvyn Hayes playing almost carbon copies of their respective characters from the latter sitcom, the paucity of the script and concept behind it is plain to see. The sexual frustration, constant innuendo and innocent banter have been completely abandoned and in its place is a more vulgar and arrogant style of comedy that struggles even with lavatorial humour; besieged by a steady stream of dreadful puns, single-handedly having to put across the worst selection of jokes in Carry On history with conviction. The more open-minded attitude to sex, with sequences featuring topless nudity only adds to the feeling that the series is, by now, clutching at straws. Even with a couple of funny moments and a clutch of actors always worth watching regardless of poor material, for a comedy, Carry On England is a pretty dismal affair as if the entire life force and humour have been drained from it by some vampiric entity. A shambolic mess consisting of the lowest hanging fruit when it comes to lewd humour and pathetic attempts at slapstick, it plays more like an obscene parody of a Carry On film than an actual Carry On film.
