The Intelligence Men

Not so the British B-movie. Studios making big-screen comedies in the Seventies merrily filched ideas from the big Bakelite box in the corner. Few British comedy stars escaped the pull of the Odeon and with every adaptation came an unusual twist.

Tony Hancock became a Bohemian artist. Morecambe and Wise got mixed up in Soviet spy rings and banana republics. Alf Garnett took LSD. Less controversially, the cast of stars of Are You Being Served? went on holiday to Spain. Many of these films are regarded, quite rightly, as inferior to the programmes which spawned them.

Some of them are still pretty good, though. Porridge: the Movie does the original proud, while the film of Man About the House goes slightly mad towards the end, taking the cast to the Thames Television studios for strange encounters with Spike Milligan and, confusingly, the real life stars of fellow sitcom Love Thy Neighbour.