Last time this was on was Friday teatime UK BBC2 15th October 1982 way before I had a video recorder, but thankfully there were tapers out there who captured this one. The Corporation had its uses back then, before their quest for audience numbers and their insatiable desire to play more mind-numbing adverts than ITV took over. It's as I remember it: a corny but anarchic, quaint yet witty transference of the popular 1940's BBC radio series to film.
Chubby Harry Korris plays thespian stalwart Mr. Lovejoy putting on a show with the help of a pretty disparate and desperate lot, that in the words from Hellzapoppin turns out to be a bust. They decide to put a musical comedy on instead. Most of the film is taken up with showing the show, a livelier and happier bunch you'd be hard pressed to find - some of the songs were forgettable, some of the dialogue sparkling, albeit delivered either in lugubrious or gormless thick Lankey dialects. Favourite bits: Hutch at the piano, chunkier than in his heyday but still sophisticated and inimitable; Korris, Vincent and Fredericks singing We Three (Just a set of twerps we may be).
Overall, entertaining hokum and of immense historical significance, which is why in this country that likes film history no older than Star Wars and likes all films to be in some way a debasing experience it is almost completely forgotten.
