Toilet and postcard humour was never more literal than in
At Your Convenience.
Watching last night, I couldn't help wondering if Cope's character here was originally intended for the other Kenny C. - Mr. Connor. Vic Spanner - a militant bolshie with a persecution complex who loses his trousers - is the kind of character Connor made a speciality of in his second phase Carry Ons.
It's oddly satisfying to see Kenneth Cope and Geoffrey Hughes appearing in the same scenes and briefly exchanging dialogue, since their Corrie characters would have been cellmates at this point. I don't believe they appeared on the Street together at all, but their characters' histories were intertwined. Eddie Yeats was pretty much Jed Stone redux, right down to his relationship with Minnie Caldwell. So this feels special from that point of view.
Richard O'Callaghan's naiveté was so convincing in
Loving that I find it quite difficult to accept him as the slightly more switched on Lewis here. The writing seems to vacillate on whether or not I'm supposed to root for him. On the one hand, he's the "them" to the perceived audience's "us", his character having a sense of middle class entitlement (middle class being something of a threat in the Carry On world). On the other hand, as portrayed by O'Callaghan he's just too darned nice to not be likeable. I can't help feeling for poor Myrtle, being torn between Lewis or Spanner. Jacki Piper seems somewhat miscast as the daughter of Sid and Hattie and appears at times to be channelling Barbara Windsor in her characterisation.
The scenes of domesticity with Sid and Hattie are very enjoyable, as is the sub plot of the budgie that can predict winning horses. Thinking about it, it's not often that regulars appear in living rooms eating dinner and reading papers, so it feels quite fresh here. Spotting the little changes to the decor with their increasing wealth passes the time nicely.
Pretty much everything is where you'd expect it to be here. Bernard Bresslaw's continues his "Bernie the loveable lump" characterisation from previous films. Patsy Rowlands is feeling like a Carry On regular by this point, and a very welcome addition. Once again her character here is infatuated with Kenneth Williams's and the inevitable scene where he awakens in her bedroom with a hangover is well-played (her line "I know what a man looks like. And you're not all that different" is delivered perfectly).
It's swings and roundabouts with the cast. Renée Houston has a beefed up role while Julian Holloway has around two lines. And Terry Scott's scenes were sadly cut out altogether.
Eric Rogers' jaunty music keeps the energy flowing all the way through. As usual, many well-known traditional pieces are worked in:
Oh Dear! What Can The Matter Be (complete with a brief sung lyric in the opening title: "Three old ladies locked in the lavatory");
She'll Be Coming 'Round The Mountain; The Quartermaster's Store. My least favourite aspect of some recent Carry Ons is the tendency to speed the occasional scene up, including the music.
At Your Convenience has a prolonged example of this in the coach montage where they visit various pubs and disappear into the woods for a pee.
One musical choice that's always felt a little strange to me is the beautifully romantic music that accompanies the borderline affair between Sid and Joan's characters. By the time they're saying goodnight after the coach trip, complete with violin soundtrack, it feels like these are the film's romantic leads. Never mind O'Callaghan/Piper or even Bernie and Margaret Nolan. The musical implication is that the flirting between this middle-aged couple - both married to other people - is what we need to root for. The characters can't possibly consummate their affair without harming other on-screen characters and alienating a good number of the audience. It's one thing for a Carry On to suggest an sexual flirtation in a saucy, shallow way, and quite another for it to give it the kind of musical accompaniment that's rarely been heard since the innocent Norman Hudis era. The message is a strange one and the whole scenario played with a tad too much reality for it to be funny. That said, it's a beautiful piece of music.
Car spotting is part of the fun here. Bill Maynard's gorgeous red Capri Mk I and Lewis's stunning Jaguar Mk X.
The Morris Marina Coupé that Sid buys after winning some money seems appropriate. Like the series itself, it's cheap, not really made to last, enjoyed by the masses and very much representative of a British industry at that time (the workers at British Leyland probably outdid Vic in the number of strikes they called). History has shown the Marina to be a pretty poor car in the long term (although the blatant bias and influence of Jeremy Clarkson and the Top Gear series have vilified the car far more than it actually warrants). But there's something quite beloved about it. And it's telling that it's shown here to be something of an aspirational car. I must say that I actually love that Bedoin paintwork. It may not have been rustproof, but early Seventies BL had some stunning colours. The sight of Sid James looking lovingly at the Morris Marina as a symbol of his success and status somehow seems to encapsulate everything that's great about Britain in 1971, and everything that wasn't.
