Reruns

Two interesting imports derive from British television:

And Now For Something Completely Different is a film extracted from the BBC's madhouse revue Monty Python's Flying Circus, which is descended in turn from the gone-but-not-forgotten Goon Show of Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe. From the Goons, the Monty Python crew learned how to raise nonsense to dizzying heights: a filmed cabaret act of two brothers who play tape recorders concealed in their noses; a Hungarian tourist who reads to startled British shopkeepers such sentences as "My Hovercraft is full of eels" from a wildly mistranslated phrase book; a mob of old ladies, "Hell's Grannies," who terrorize London; an earnest competition for "Upper-Class Twit of the Year." These goonish concepts are executed with due gusto by Graham Chapman,

John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin. They are also responsible for the writing, which often sounds as though it had been done inside a padded cell.

Alf 'n' Family, as the title is meant to suggest to American audiences, was the source of All in the Family. In its original television version, called Till Death Us Do Part, it enjoyed enormous success, but the Alf of the series and of this caustic film (Warren Mitchell) is no lovable oaf like Archie Bunker. He is a meanspirited, loudmouthed, craven boozer who is portrayed by Writer Johnny Speight and Director Norman Cohen with deadly dispassion.

Instead of the growling, affectionate bantering that goes on between the Bunkers, Alf and his wife Else (Dandy Nichols) engage in a lifelong struggle to wound. One Christmas Eve, Else tells Alf that she is pregnant. They cannot recall when or how it could have happened. In the film's best scene, Alf gets drunk at his daughter's wedding, insults the guests and finally passes out. "He ruined my wedding," the bride weeps on her mother's shoulder. "Don't worry," Else soothes her. "He ruined mine too." J.C.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.