Solicitor Squash

INT. DAY. SQUASH COURT.

TWO THIRTY-SOMETHING MEN ARE PLAYING SQUASH AND TALKING.

DAVID:
Have you took on any cases recently involving zombies?

STEPHEN:
Zombies? Nothing recently, although I had a zombie separation a while back. Why?

DAVID:
I had this guy, a zombie of course, enquiring about making a will.

STEPHEN:
Oooh, good shot. . Zombie wills are a real grey area. I remember doing one about ten years ago. Your best bet is to look up Regina v Brains 1985.

DAVID:
It's the dead/undead context, it's really confusing. (PAUSE) You're not at your game today, what's wrong?

STEPHEN:
I'm shattered. The police woke me up last night. They needed a solicitor for their custody suite. I had to represent a kerb crawler.

DAVID:
It wasn't a zombie, was it?

STEPHEN:
No such luck. It's that dalek again.

DAVID:
Him again?

STEPHEN:
Indeed. A habitual offender if ever there was one. But, you know, it'll just be the usual, a fine, a slap on the wrist, or plunger whatever, and away he goes again.

DAVID:
Let's have a break. (PAUSE) I know, the Crown Prosecution Service are loathe to imprison daleks.

STEPHEN:
You know as well as I do that incarcarated daleks absolutely refuse to integrate. Plus, you have staircases.

DAVID:
I could count on one hand the amount of dalek-friendly prisons I know.

STEPHEN:
Anyway, how's Satan's boundary dispute coming on?

DAVID:
Land and Registry are refusing to send a surveyor to Hell. It's threw a real spanner in the works.

STEPHEN:
I nearly forgot. Did I tell you about my wife's golfing partner?

DAVID:
I don't think so.

STEPHEN:
She's in property. Apparently, God has had the estate agents in, for a valuation.

DAVID:
Really? What price did they put on Heaven?

STEPHEN:
Well, it's undisclosed.

DAVID:
Pah! I'll buy you a beer.

STEPHEN:
6.9 Million.

DAVID:
I thought Heaven would be worth more than that.

STEPHEN:
It should have been ten, but it's riddled with damp.

Hello. Aside from the surrealism, where did I go wrong?

I thought there were some really funny bits in there, Nigel. The escalation is good with the Devil and God coming naturally at the end, but I think it missed some killer observation/dénouement. Bearing in mind that we are talking about lawyers and estate agents here - maybe Stephen laughs and says: Of course God's never going to be able to sell Heaven – he'd never let estate agents and lawyers in the place.

Don't know, but as I said, I liked it.

My problem with this is that teh premise is not sufficiently delimited - you could continue the sketch almost indefinitely with assorted weird clients.

Perhaps the approach should be to break it down into a series of quickies as a runner.

Quote: Timbo @ October 16 2009, 3:38 PM BST

My problem with this is that teh premise is not sufficiently delimited - you could continue the sketch almost indefinitely with assorted weird clients.

Perhaps the approach should be to break it down into a series of quickies as a runner.

View original

Timbo's beaten me to it, Nigel. I read this the other night and thought - great premise, but it drifts from zombies to other surreal "cases" without resolving any of them. I think the everyday set-up of them talking naturalistically about these cases is great, but each idea needs a full stop. It would work well as a runner.

P.S. I loved "Regina v Brains".

Some good lines & a great idea
I think it might work better if it was just about the Zombies.
Which I suppose agrees with Timbos runner suggestion.