Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Marc Wootton, Barry Castagnola, James Hurn, Phil Cornwell, Ian Pearce, Toby Longworth.
It has been observed that the closest occupation resembling death, is that of writing. The endless search for inspiration is consuming, an overwhelming, often fearful, unbearable shadow in which the writer sees only blankness before them. It is a struggle that requires discipline, the ability to keep going in a desert of solo thought, and fortune to come up with an idea that, if you are lucky, will grip the nation in tears, or with hope in laughter.
To sit at any machine resembling the artful, but now seen as archaic and cumbersome, typewriter and be able to produce not just one, but two of the most successful comedies in which the B.B.C. produced in its long history is not just to be applauded but deservingly eulogised over. It may be the combination of stars that inhabit a show that gives it its face to the public, but it is the writer’s bow that gives it its heart and soul.
The recent loss of Ray Galton at the age of 88 has only reminded people of what a force of nature the team of Galton and Simpson was, at the height of the powers they not only came up with what can only be considered the first true British situation comedy in Hancock’s Half Hour, starring the irreplaceable Tony Hancock, but also the indomitable Steptoe and Son staring Wilfred Brambell and Harry H. Corbett. For some this strength of comedy was arguably natural, as clear as blue skies over East Cheam, but as the drama Looking For Oil Drum Lane shows, not all is easy for the writer when they have been dispensed with by the biggest name in comedy at the time.
A passion for comedy came in the oddest of places, a sanatorium for T.B. sufferers after the war, and yet arguably the biggest struggle they would have to overcome was the severe writer’s block induced by the combination of factors placed at their door as first Tony Hancock insisted he wanted to get away from the persona built upon around him successfully on radio and television, and then the thought of silver lining, but perhaps more appropriately disguised golden dagger, of being asked by the B.B.C. to come up with new situations for a ten part comedy playhouse.
In the act of writer’s block, a black sky can be seen to hover the fingers as they stutter or freeze in the attempt to capture the imagination, a chance remark after many weeks offering salvation to the mind, and for Galton and Simpson, portrayed by Marc Wooten and Barry Castagnola, that salvation was bringing Harold and Albert Steptoe to life, a creation so brilliant that it was compared by Harry H. Corbett as being akin to Beckett.
The dramatization of the events that brought this creation to life is handled with sensitivity to the truth and to the nature of the two writers, their work will forever be lauded by British comedy fans, a second story that almost never come to be, but one, unlike the passing of the human spirit in its act of finality, came to breathe again, that brought new life to television and the beauty of tragedy and joy together in equal, and marvellous measure.
Ian D. Hall