Ian Carmichael (I)

A Boulting brothers comedy based on Kingsley Amis's bestselling satirical novel. Little satire here, though: the casting of Ian Carmichael as the eponymous hero, with Terry-Thomas in attendance, points to a more broadly farcical intent. The angry young university lecturer Jim Dixon is invited to the house of pompous professor Hugh Griffith for the weekend, where he is acutely accident-prone.

A satirical antidote to the stiff-upper-lip war films of the 40s and 50s. This is more the province of a Carry On Marching, with naive national serviceman Ian Carmichael embarking on an unofficial raid on Germany to liberate Nazi-acquired art treasures. One of the great fighting platoons of British comedy - including Terry Thomas, Dennis Price and Richard Attenborough - work classic manoeuvres.

Robert Hamer's last film, made as his alcoholism was taking a heavy toll, lacks the delicious wickedness of earlier works, such as Kind Hearts And Coronet, but there's much to enjoy. Based on Stephen Potter's bestselling books Gamesmanship, Oneupmanship and Lifemanship, it stars Ian Carmichael as the naive Palfrey, who joins Alastair Sim's College of Lifemanship to turn the tables on his oppressors: a snooty waiter, a pair of secondhand car swindlers and, worst of all, tennis cheat Terry-Thomas, who has stolen his girlfriend.

The Small, Intricate Life of Gerald C Potter (Radio 4 Extra, 8.30am) brings back Basil Boothroyd's quietly comic classic from the Seventies, with Ian Carmichael as the amiable crime writer who never quite finishes anything and Charlotte Mitchell as his wife, who does. P.G. Wodehouse himself was a Boothroyd fan.