Keep Off the Grass

Do seek this 27 minute short film out if you can find it. It's absolutely wonderful, a real comic gem.

It's a day in the life of a park with the park-keeper played by Dave King of The Long Good Friday and the visitors to the park by a range of excellent British actors, including Patricia Routledge (Hyacinth Bucket in Keeping Up Appearances) and a very young-looking Hugh Laurie. But the real stars of this film are the dogs, of every breed imaginable and upstaging the humans at every opportunity. If they handed out Oscars to dogs (and why not?)these canines should be the first nominated. (And let's not forget the trainers, Olive and Nigel Tate, who are listed in the credits at the end but I see are missing from the IMDb crew list. That should be rectified.)

To sum up then this ranks as one of the funniest films I've seen in a half-century of viewing. Watch it if you can, you won't be disappointed!

The park keeper (Dave King) arrives to open up and, as usual, encounters a lady with three dogs (Patricia Routledge). Then his helper "Errol" (Steven Woodcock) arrives on his bike - he's late, missed his bus. The rest of the day progresses normally with joggers and other dog walkers and that gives director Paul Weiland a free hand to illustrate that it takes all types to make a world! Eccentrics or what? It turns out that he has a penchant for gardening and that the legendary "Capability" Brown is one of his heroes. When the lady knocks on his door seeking some hot water for her tea, he discovers that both have an interest in the great British landscape gardeners and who knows, maybe this could be the start of a lovely friendship as we continue to watch the nutcases trying to train their pets and "Errol" grows his very own strain of "Turkish Grass" in the greenhouse. David Earl has scored this in a jolly and engaging fashion and though maybe it's five minutes too long, it's quite an amiable look at the British and their foibles. I've never did like dogs!