His Lordship Entertains

I've mentioned this a few times in other threads long in the past - a long-forgotten BBC sitcom written by and starring the great Ronnie Barker.

Featuring the Lord Rustless character he was so fond of (originated in The Ronnie Barker Playhouse in 1968 and spun off into his own sitcom-cum-sketch show, Hark At Barker, 1969 - 70), its his third outing (1972) and sees the country pile of Chrome Hall turned into a country house hotel.

Frank Gatliff is the reliable butler, badger; underrated sitcom legend Josephine Tewson is Rustless's secretary/receptionist; and Sir David Jason is heavily disguised as the decrepit gardener and bellboy, Dithers.

All seven episodes were wiped by Auntie, but one was recovered in B&W from New Zealand 15 years ago. I was lucky enough to see it at the time at a Missing Believed Wiped screening and instantly loved it. The show is obviously quite a different beast to the likes of Porridge and Open All Hours, featuring more of the silly sauce and wordplay that Ronnie loved so much, and is a real delight.

The episode itself should prove of real interest to sitcom fans: it concerns the hotel's visitation by an inspector, and the staff hurriedly trying to find out his or her identity and put on the best show possible.

Wonderfully, colour restoration techniques have now progressed so much that the episode has been fully, comprehensively overhauled - and is going to be released on DVD! I was again lucky to be able to see a near-complete colourisation at 2021's Missing Believed Wiped, which looked quite remarkable, and it's now been finished.

Amazingly, the process is largely automated with AI: they feed in a high resolution scan of the black and white film, then give the computer reference points such as surviving colour still photography, and set it to work. Niggles can then be ironed out frame-by-frame by hand, making full-scale colour restoration of this type a very real possibility for mass archive upgrades in future.

Full story here on the DVD: https://www.comedy.co.uk/tv/news/6801/his-lordship-entertains-on-dvd/

It's £19.99, so quite pricey for a single episode, but well worth it IMO. The price reflects the amount of love and work that's gone into it, and it's issued by Kaleidoscope, the primary organisation for finding, recovering and restoring lost television programmes, so even whatever cut is profit is going to a very good place. I can't wait to see it again.

Quote: Aaron @ 6th April 2022, 1:41 PM

...................... it concerns the hotel's visitation by an inspector, and the staff hurriedly trying to find out his or her identity and put on the best show possible.

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Sounds familiar.................?

Quote: Hercules Grytpype Thynne @ 6th April 2022, 2:27 PM

Sounds familiar.................?

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Indeed! It's a most interesting comparison.

Presumable JC never saw this, before he wrote his classic, in which Bernard Cribbins is absolutely superb!! I love that episode just to see him ?

Quote: Hercules Grytpype Thynne @ 6th April 2022, 2:40 PM

Presumable JC never saw this, before he wrote his classic, in which Bernard Cribbins is absolutely superb!! I love that episode just to see him ?

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Difficult to know. They'd been working together not ever so long previously, so every chance he'd have watched it out of friendly and professional curiosity - but whilst the basic set-up of the episodes are very similar, they each go in different directions.

So now you have me visualising RB and JC having a drink together, after say one of the Frost progs. and one of them says "I've got a great idea for one of the episodes in my sitcom set in a hotel, where the owner doesn't know which of the guests is actually a hotel inspector", and hilarity ensues - almost a Rix farce, when put like that. ?

In fairness I think it would be hard to write a sitcom set in a hotel without a hotel inspector plot involved somewhere, although I don't doubt he'd have seen his friend's sitcom. But by 1972 I reckon his own creation was fairly well developed, and his prototype Basil had already appeared in a Doctor At Large episode he penned. I'd have thought the idea of a hotel inspector episode would have come early to a writer and was bound to come at some point.