At Last, The 1948 Show "Four Yorkshire Men"

When I was young, there was no such thing as The Simpsons. No iPods, (Nor even Sony Walkmen. Or is that Walksman?) no cell phones, no Department of Homeland Security. All we had were such antiquities as the moon landings, the Concorde, and the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Of course, my father's generation had it worse, what with no TV, no FM radio, and having to see WWII won long before they could even dream of moonwalks. Kids nowadays have it easy with their GPS, their CNN, and their TRL. Oh, wait, I understand MTV has cancelled Total Request Live. The horrors!

But none of us ever had it as bad as the old days. Having to walk up hill in the snow both to and home from school. Whether you want to rue or reminisce the olden days, you certainly don't remember them as they are. Neither do these gentlemen. (Or is it gentlesman?) Here are "Four Yorkshire Men" remembering the good old days, with Jim Brooke Taylor, John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Marty Feldman of At Last, The 1948 Show. Enjoy.

Terry Gilliam's "Time Bandits"

Terry Gilliam’s live action fantasy, Time Bandits, is one of the director's better works. More coherent than his widely panned Adventures of Baron Munchausen it is not so malevolent as his absurdist fantasy Brazil or as tragic as his dark science fiction masterpiece 12 Monkeys.

This wonderful romp tells the story of Kevin, a young English boy whose parents don’t believe him when he explains that the noise coming from his bedroom is not his fault. Kidnapped by a band of renegade dwarves with a map of time and space, Kevin and his abductors visit Napoleonic Europe, Robin Hood’s Merrie Olde England, Agammemnon’s Mycenae and the sinking Titanic, as well as the Time of Legend, and the Fortress of Ultimate Darkness, where Evil himself resides!



Not only is this movie a terrific adventure story for children, it is a wicked satire that will please adults, and it is an object lesson in false metaphysics. The movie ends with Kevin’s parents eyeing the burnt cinders of a pot-roast left to char in the microwave, "pure evil" as a material substance. Told by Kevin not to touch it, his parents find its fascination a fatal temptation. I could watch this movie on a weekly basis, the eye-gags and verbal play are so good. Katherine Helmond's performance as Mrs. Ogre is alone worth the price of the movie. The ending credits play to a George Harrison tune that embodies pure joy.

You can watch the movie in full here at YouTube.

Here, Ultimate Evil discourses on slugs and the silicon chip:

John Cleese "Fawlty Towers"

Regularly rated Britain's best sitcom, Fawlty Towers, the story of abrasive hotel owner Basil Fawlty, has a worldwide cult following over thirty years after its run on the BBC. According to Wikipedia, the series was inspired when John Cleese and other members of the Monty Python troop stayed at Donald Sinclair's Gleneagle hotel. Sinclair, whom Cleese characterized as "the most marvellously rude man" he "had ever met" was reported to have thrown a bus schedule at a guest who asked the time of the next arrival and is said to have put Eric Idle's suitcase outside the garden wall, suspecting that the ticking alarm clock he heard was a bomb. Sinclair supposedly told troop member Terry Gilliam, an American, that he was holding his fork in the wrong hand as he ate. Those who have seen Fawlty Towers will recall such shenanigans from the show. Those who haven't might imagine the comic possibilities.

The characters of Fawlty Towers also include Fawlty's shrewish wife Sybil, whom he describes as his "toxic midget", his "little piranha fish" and able "to kill a man at 10 paces with one blow of her tongue" and the Spanish waiter and bellboy Manuel whose profound incomprehension of English and slapstick manner make him a comedy legend. Perhaps Manuel's funniest performance is in what I believe is one of the best Fawlty Tower's episodes, "The Germans." This episode features a disastrous fire drill, a talking moose, and a concussed Basil impersonating Hitler to a family of vacationing Germans. It is difficult to watch this episode without pause, due to the tendency of the non-stop laughter it provokes to induce asphyxiation. Enjoy!

Fawlty Towers, The Germans, Part I: