The Missing Hancocks (R4) | iPlayer
Short Cuts: After Dark (R4) | iPlayer
I was on Radio 4’s Loose Ends the other week, and one of the guests was the actor Neil Pearson. He was there to promote The Missing Hancocks, a series of radio programmes that he’s produced, rather than acted in: remakes of Hancock’s Half Hour. The original show ran for 103 episodes, from 1954 to ’59, but 20 of the earliest recordings have been lost. Pearson found some original scripts for the show and put it to the BBC that it should remake a few with contemporary actors for the show’s 60th anniversary. So we get five of the best of the lost ones.
To me, this sounded partly like a great idea and partly like a terrible one. A great idea, because there are many Hancock fans out there, and none of them can hear these missing shows any more. A terrible one, because great work is often forgotten and misplaced, and, well, such is life. Life continues on, apace and without sentiment, whether or not a piece of art happened, and whether or not anyone saved it. Why try and recreate that art?
Anyway, the first of these new episodes – The Matador – aired this week. And my misgivings disappeared. I am very glad that these shows have been redone. I thought that the new actors might be off-putting, but Kevin McNally sounded astonishingly like Tony Hancock, as did Robin Sebastian as Kenneth Williams. Simon Greenall, who plays Sid James, was a teeny bit out; but only a teeny bit, not enough to stop you listening. Anyhow, the real delight was the script. Written by Galton and Simpson, both now in their 80s, it was a proper winner. Great one-liners, fantastic flights of fancy, a consistency of character that led to joke upon joke (I loved Hancock, shoved into a Spanish bullfight by a series of Sid James’s set-ups, only being annoyed with the bull for spoiling his gags: “That animal completely ruined my set.”).
Comedy geeks have long had it that the Hancock shows are the first ever sitcoms. Before Hancock, comedy programmes consisted of sketches punctuated by other variety acts. Hancock’s Half Hour, with its regular, and regularly frustrated, characters, became the blueprint for every sitcom that followed. From the evidence of this programme, that blueprint hasn’t often been bettered.
Another comedian, Josie Long, presents Short Cuts, a series that I keep meaning to mention but never get around to. Some radio programmes just chug along being great without any help from reviewers or anyone else. Short Cuts, which gives us a collection of loosely linked mini-documentaries, is one of those shows.
This week’s link was “After Dark”, a category stretchy enough to include a man who lost his memory following a motorcycle crash, a woman who reads erotica to elderly people, two managers of rock stars who died young – Danny Goldberg (Kurt Cobain) and Dave Lory (Jeff Buckley), if you must know – and true love that blossomed under a solar eclipse. Each slice of life was just lovely and so heartening to hear: offbeat stories of human experience always make the world seem better. I especially enjoyed the porny book group, whose aged members told the reader that her readings are the highlight of their week.
Long, who sounds like she’s on the verge of laughter at all times, is a kind host, not particularly funny here, but warm. The shows are produced by the independent company Falling Tree, a hallmark of excellence when it comes to radio documentaries. I wonder if these small pieces of art will survive?
