Average User Rating: 1 Vote(s)
 
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
There is no coverscan for By the Sea
Video Cover Thumbnail(s)

Distributor BBC
Catalogue Number BBCV7024
Release Series
Release Date May 1984
Duration:
Printed Classification
Notes Double-bill with The Picnic
User Reviews:
by Lee James Turnock
A largely silent fifty-minute comedy shot on location on the Dorset coast and featuring the Two Ronnies? Who could possibly complain about such an innocent venture? Step forward that stalwart self-appointed defender of the nation's morals, Mary Whitehouse, who objected to such obviously shocking sights as Ronnie Corbett being forcibly ejected from a revolving door and someone being poked in the back of the head with a parasol. That aside, [i]By the Sea[/i] has something of a chequered history. Having scored a modest degree of success with his earlier 'grumble and grunt' comedies [i]Futtock's End[/i] and [i]the Picnic[/i] (and having become one of the BBC's biggest stars in the meantime), Ronnie Barker was trusted with a pet project which sought to bring his beloved seaside postcard humour (Barker was a keen collector of printed ephemera, in particular saucy postcards) to the small screen and hopefully generate an ample supply of laughs in the process. Unfortunately, he was a little too close to the project and the first cut of what was intended as an hour-long special clocked in at almost ninety minutes and was judged to be a disaster. (Bear in mind that this was around the time the PC culture was taking shape and alternative comedy was loudly asserting itself as a force to be reckoned with). Alan JW Bell - best known today as the long-serving director of [i]Last of the Summer Wine[/i], but also a versatile and talented comedy director who had worked on [i]the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy[/i], [i]Ripping Yarns[/i] and Spike Milligan's [i]There's A Lot Of It About[/i] - was brought in to reshape the footage, which he did, bringing the running time down to a more manageable fifty minutes and adding a specially commissioned score from the redoubtable Ronnie Hazlehurst into the bargain. According to Ronnie Barker, another producer wanted to cut the film down to half an hour, but Barker warned him that he'd leave the BBC if that happened. Perhaps inevitably, given the troubled production process, [i]By the Sea[/i] isn't representative of the Two Ronnies at their best - Leslie Halliwell described it as 'Jacques Tati on an off day' - but it's worth a look on a slow afternoon, and it's consistently mildly amusing as opposed to flat-out hilarious.