Post by Grumbledook on Nov 18, 2005 9:24:09 GMT
I finished screening Hancock's Last Hour (a.k.a. The Australian Series), and I decided to post some random thoughts on the show. Since Hancock's shows are routinely discussed on this forum, I thought it would be of interest, at least if one can overlook my relative ignorance of British television.
Hancock’s Last Hour (and a Quarter) a/k/a The Australian TV Series
Creative Media Marketing
114 minutes
ABC TV, Color
Although most of his later career setbacks were self-inflicted, one cannot help but take pity on Tony Hancock. One senses that if only he had been born in, say, 1960 instead of 1924, perhaps he would have been able to navigate the decline phase of his career more adroitly. Now, there are seemingly endless opportunities for stars fading into oblivion, especially in the States: guest appearances on UPN shows, a vast proliferation of talk shows, digital radio, cable TV, and so on ad infinitum. In the U.K. of Hancock’s era, however, there was only BBC-1 (BBC-2 didn’t come along until 1964) and ITV. His decline, therefore, went something like this: a short-lived ATV (an ITV regional company) series, two short-lived series on ABC (another ITV regional company), then a series for Australian television which never was – after the filming of the first three episodes, Hancock committed suicide, overdosing on vodka and barbiturates.
But while Hancock, if he had lived in our times, would have been afforded more opportunities as a result of the expansion of the electronic media, it would not have solved the basic problem of Hancock’s career. He went into a decline when he ditched the writing team of Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. Moreover, his alcoholism alienated British television producers who found him an increasingly difficult person with whom to work. Indeed, watching this video, it seems hard to believe that this is the man who dazzled us with such gems as “The Blood Donor” only seven years earlier. Physically, he seems a wreck. While he never had the most robust physical appearance, here he seems an endoplasmic blob, and his face looks pale. From a comedic standpoint, the Hancock we see here is a far cry from the Hancock of old, and while he tries, his sense of timing seems to be gone; moreover, the material is simply substandard.
Where do we begin? The basic premise of the show is that Hancock is emigrating to Australia; the first three shows consist of him traveling to this antipodean refuge via boat, arriving, staying at a hotel, renting an apartment, and going to a sports club where the only exercise is watching TV and drinking beer. The Hancock character is the Hancock character from the BBC TV series; he even wears his trademark homburg and carries a stuffed owl with him – I’m assuming the latter was a reference to the stuffed owl he carried with him throughout “The Emigrant”. [Part of the problem with this series is that it covers ground already covered in the aforementioned “Hancock’s Half Hour” episode, although that’s not the main shortcoming of this series.] Hancock is a shadow of the comic he once was, but he’s still leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the (mostly Australian) cast, most of which turn in rather amateurish performances. First up, we have a character called Mervyn (Don Crosby), Hancock’s valet, whose presence seems to be a poor attempt to recreate the old Hancock-Bill Kerr dynamic, but instead only invites unflattering comparisons. Then we get Miss Bancroft, a bikini-clad girl who looks like some sort of fugitive from “Laugh-In”; thankfully, at least this is a non-speaking role.
The program begins with animated opening credits, which seems to have been in vogue around that time (witness Dad’s Army and other shows of the day). Then we see Hancock on the deck of a ship, fighting with a woman for a deck chair. Seeing Hancock in color is a little disconcerting, not unlike seeing Lucille Ball in color on television – one associates Lucille Ball in the color TV era with inferior work product (i.e. Here’s Lucy), and the same holds here. Anyhow, Hancock is probably the only ten-pound pom (it’s mentioned at some point that he’s going to Australia on the assisted fare) to have a valet. This in itself could have considerable comedic potential if not for the wooden performance of Don Crosby as Mervyn. Still, we get some laughs as Hancock attempts to invite Miss Bancroft to his cabin for dinner, but Mervyn sends the invitation to a different Miss Bancroft – a middle-aged, overly amorous (at least when she’s had a few) woman. But he ditches her when she finds out that the captain has invited him and the young Miss Bancroft to dinner. Hancock takes full advantage of this occasion to bribe the captain so that he will be named the two-millionth migrant. Yet at the ceremony where he receives this award, he is ignored in favor of the more attractive Miss Bancroft. The material here is uneven: there are some laughs, but it seems that the Hancock character, who was once an everyman with which one could emphasize, now seems like a pompous idiot. [Or maybe the character was a twit all along, but we just overlooked his shortcomings.]
Hancock goes through customs, and has his stuffed owl confiscated (it has to be put in quarantine for a time). Again, I thought this was a nice nod to the original series. He stays at a hotel, where he recalls his last night in Britain, when he went down to the local pub, and was ignored by everyone until he revealed that he was leaving for Australia – then he had to buy everyone a round of drinks. The cleaning lady tells Hancock that the hotel is a rip-off and suggests that he rent an apartment from a friend of hers, Mrs. Gilroy (Gloria Dawn). Mrs. Gilroy turns out to be an overly amorous widow, but Hancock rents the apartment anyway. There are some good moments as Hancock checks out the kitchen, which Mrs. Gilroy’s late husband refurbished with all the latest conveniences, including a stovetop where the burners apparently double as radios. The segment never really reached its full comedic potential, but it was still funny, especially when Hancock is trying to flip the plastic cups into the trash bin – then a breakable cup comes crashing down. Mervyn returns in the next scene – apparently all his friends have left the country and he’s a stranger in his own country, so he seeks Hancock’s advice. Hancock suggests that they watch TV to get an idea of what local culture is like, but all the programs are American.
Later on, the milkman arrives, and notes that Hancock is out of shape. He then invites Hancock to an athletic club, but it turns out to be a pub. Here he gets into a promising row with a bantamweight champion. The dude is skinny but lean and muscular, and the situation almost escalates into fisticuffs – then the impending crisis is defused when the barmaid notes that nobody has paid for the last round of drinks. This is pretty much where the film ends.
It’s relatively easy to see why ABC would be eager to do a Hancock series in 1968 – Hancock’s Half Hour was quite popular in Australia, and producing their own Hancock series would give the network a chance to replicate the success of the original Hancock series with a home grown show. What is surprising is that those in ABC who got to see the footage that was filmed were optimistic about the project. The show pales in comparison to the Hancock of old; the writing is substandard, and the acting is sub-par. At this point, Hancock should have been begging Galton and Simpson to come back. Instead we are left with this program as his final work product.
One aspect of the show that’s interesting is that it was filmed in color (although the video quality here leaves much to be desired). Yet Australia did not switch over to color broadcasting until 1975. This raises a question: why exactly did they bother to film in color? I’m guessing that they were anticipating selling the show to the UK – probably to ITV – and they figured that it would be more marketable if the show were in color since both the BBC and ITV were in the process of switching over to color.
Anyhow, Hancock’s Last Hour is relatively pedestrian fare. For all I know, ABC may have been producing groundbreaking TV in the 1960’s, but this isn’t it. Everyone except die-hard Hancock fans would be advised to steer clear. If it were extremely awful, it would be notable as an example of exceptionally bad TV, but it doesn’t even achieve such a level of notoriety – it just sort of plods on for 75 minutes, and then abruptly ends. Move along people; nothing to see here.
Hancock’s Last Hour (and a Quarter) a/k/a The Australian TV Series
Creative Media Marketing
114 minutes
ABC TV, Color
Although most of his later career setbacks were self-inflicted, one cannot help but take pity on Tony Hancock. One senses that if only he had been born in, say, 1960 instead of 1924, perhaps he would have been able to navigate the decline phase of his career more adroitly. Now, there are seemingly endless opportunities for stars fading into oblivion, especially in the States: guest appearances on UPN shows, a vast proliferation of talk shows, digital radio, cable TV, and so on ad infinitum. In the U.K. of Hancock’s era, however, there was only BBC-1 (BBC-2 didn’t come along until 1964) and ITV. His decline, therefore, went something like this: a short-lived ATV (an ITV regional company) series, two short-lived series on ABC (another ITV regional company), then a series for Australian television which never was – after the filming of the first three episodes, Hancock committed suicide, overdosing on vodka and barbiturates.
But while Hancock, if he had lived in our times, would have been afforded more opportunities as a result of the expansion of the electronic media, it would not have solved the basic problem of Hancock’s career. He went into a decline when he ditched the writing team of Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. Moreover, his alcoholism alienated British television producers who found him an increasingly difficult person with whom to work. Indeed, watching this video, it seems hard to believe that this is the man who dazzled us with such gems as “The Blood Donor” only seven years earlier. Physically, he seems a wreck. While he never had the most robust physical appearance, here he seems an endoplasmic blob, and his face looks pale. From a comedic standpoint, the Hancock we see here is a far cry from the Hancock of old, and while he tries, his sense of timing seems to be gone; moreover, the material is simply substandard.
Where do we begin? The basic premise of the show is that Hancock is emigrating to Australia; the first three shows consist of him traveling to this antipodean refuge via boat, arriving, staying at a hotel, renting an apartment, and going to a sports club where the only exercise is watching TV and drinking beer. The Hancock character is the Hancock character from the BBC TV series; he even wears his trademark homburg and carries a stuffed owl with him – I’m assuming the latter was a reference to the stuffed owl he carried with him throughout “The Emigrant”. [Part of the problem with this series is that it covers ground already covered in the aforementioned “Hancock’s Half Hour” episode, although that’s not the main shortcoming of this series.] Hancock is a shadow of the comic he once was, but he’s still leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the (mostly Australian) cast, most of which turn in rather amateurish performances. First up, we have a character called Mervyn (Don Crosby), Hancock’s valet, whose presence seems to be a poor attempt to recreate the old Hancock-Bill Kerr dynamic, but instead only invites unflattering comparisons. Then we get Miss Bancroft, a bikini-clad girl who looks like some sort of fugitive from “Laugh-In”; thankfully, at least this is a non-speaking role.
The program begins with animated opening credits, which seems to have been in vogue around that time (witness Dad’s Army and other shows of the day). Then we see Hancock on the deck of a ship, fighting with a woman for a deck chair. Seeing Hancock in color is a little disconcerting, not unlike seeing Lucille Ball in color on television – one associates Lucille Ball in the color TV era with inferior work product (i.e. Here’s Lucy), and the same holds here. Anyhow, Hancock is probably the only ten-pound pom (it’s mentioned at some point that he’s going to Australia on the assisted fare) to have a valet. This in itself could have considerable comedic potential if not for the wooden performance of Don Crosby as Mervyn. Still, we get some laughs as Hancock attempts to invite Miss Bancroft to his cabin for dinner, but Mervyn sends the invitation to a different Miss Bancroft – a middle-aged, overly amorous (at least when she’s had a few) woman. But he ditches her when she finds out that the captain has invited him and the young Miss Bancroft to dinner. Hancock takes full advantage of this occasion to bribe the captain so that he will be named the two-millionth migrant. Yet at the ceremony where he receives this award, he is ignored in favor of the more attractive Miss Bancroft. The material here is uneven: there are some laughs, but it seems that the Hancock character, who was once an everyman with which one could emphasize, now seems like a pompous idiot. [Or maybe the character was a twit all along, but we just overlooked his shortcomings.]
Hancock goes through customs, and has his stuffed owl confiscated (it has to be put in quarantine for a time). Again, I thought this was a nice nod to the original series. He stays at a hotel, where he recalls his last night in Britain, when he went down to the local pub, and was ignored by everyone until he revealed that he was leaving for Australia – then he had to buy everyone a round of drinks. The cleaning lady tells Hancock that the hotel is a rip-off and suggests that he rent an apartment from a friend of hers, Mrs. Gilroy (Gloria Dawn). Mrs. Gilroy turns out to be an overly amorous widow, but Hancock rents the apartment anyway. There are some good moments as Hancock checks out the kitchen, which Mrs. Gilroy’s late husband refurbished with all the latest conveniences, including a stovetop where the burners apparently double as radios. The segment never really reached its full comedic potential, but it was still funny, especially when Hancock is trying to flip the plastic cups into the trash bin – then a breakable cup comes crashing down. Mervyn returns in the next scene – apparently all his friends have left the country and he’s a stranger in his own country, so he seeks Hancock’s advice. Hancock suggests that they watch TV to get an idea of what local culture is like, but all the programs are American.
Later on, the milkman arrives, and notes that Hancock is out of shape. He then invites Hancock to an athletic club, but it turns out to be a pub. Here he gets into a promising row with a bantamweight champion. The dude is skinny but lean and muscular, and the situation almost escalates into fisticuffs – then the impending crisis is defused when the barmaid notes that nobody has paid for the last round of drinks. This is pretty much where the film ends.
It’s relatively easy to see why ABC would be eager to do a Hancock series in 1968 – Hancock’s Half Hour was quite popular in Australia, and producing their own Hancock series would give the network a chance to replicate the success of the original Hancock series with a home grown show. What is surprising is that those in ABC who got to see the footage that was filmed were optimistic about the project. The show pales in comparison to the Hancock of old; the writing is substandard, and the acting is sub-par. At this point, Hancock should have been begging Galton and Simpson to come back. Instead we are left with this program as his final work product.
One aspect of the show that’s interesting is that it was filmed in color (although the video quality here leaves much to be desired). Yet Australia did not switch over to color broadcasting until 1975. This raises a question: why exactly did they bother to film in color? I’m guessing that they were anticipating selling the show to the UK – probably to ITV – and they figured that it would be more marketable if the show were in color since both the BBC and ITV were in the process of switching over to color.
Anyhow, Hancock’s Last Hour is relatively pedestrian fare. For all I know, ABC may have been producing groundbreaking TV in the 1960’s, but this isn’t it. Everyone except die-hard Hancock fans would be advised to steer clear. If it were extremely awful, it would be notable as an example of exceptionally bad TV, but it doesn’t even achieve such a level of notoriety – it just sort of plods on for 75 minutes, and then abruptly ends. Move along people; nothing to see here.
- the series was produced by commercial station ATN-7 Sydney (and ultimately screened in 1972 by their sister station in Melbourne, HSV-7). The ABC had nothing to do with it.