There are not many people left in this world with principles and even if there are, few stick to them with such vigour as ITV4. Over the last few years ITV4 has shown a film every Sunday afternoon of highly questionable quality.
There have been such wonders as the On the Buses trilogy, Man About The House : The Movie and George and Mildred : the Movie.
A couple of weeks ago came the top of the heap, the king of the road, the big cheese of bad films. Cannon and Ball's big screen debut (and swansong) The Boys in Blue from 1983. The Boys in Blue was a remake of the 1939 Will Hay classic British comedy Ask a Policeman and only had one thing in common, it was British.
Watching The Boys in Blue in 2011 was a sobering experience. It was like watching a group of drunk aliens trying to discover comedy in a dark room. Every line that spewed from the comedy double act fell over like a drunk donkey in the snow. Someone should of reminded Tommy and Bobby that this was a major motion picture and not the tea time matinee at the Grand Theatre, Blackpool.
The very thought that Tommy Cannon and Bobby Ball were once a highly popular double act is as hard to imagine as a Unicorn Bigfoot hunter. However, I am old enough to remember 1983 and the fact that Cannon and Ball were a fixture on televison. I owned a "Rock on Tommy" T-shirt (with sewn on braces) and could often be heard exclaiming the cheeky catchphrase to anyone that would listen. Seeing Ball bark out his cheeky catchphrase 28 years later it was easy to understand how people could have disliked me as a child.
The film plods along with the same wild abandon as a knackered tortoise with asthma. We are shown a lovely rural area of Britain, the name of which is Little Botham (and as we are hilariously reminded on many occasions it is pronounced "Both-am", not "bottom" or "mudflaps" or indeed "minge", like you were probably thinking - idiot) and we see our hapless policemen struggling to control a very minor traffic jam caused by some cows. If this scene were a genuine reflection of the British police in 1982, it is totally unsurprising that it took so long to catch the Yorkshire Ripper.
We are introduced to Sargent Tommy Cannon, all glamour, charm and chiselled good looks. Tommy is putting his unique and sexy gifts to good use by keeping a queue of cars calm. He senses their frustration and calls to his opposite number, enquiring just how much longer the delay will be. Tommy's opposite number is P.C. Bobby Ball. He is using all of his considerable acting ability here to play an absolute bell-end. Bobby is struggling with some cows (and a farmer) that are blocking the street. Tommy steps in and uses an almost Crocodile Dundee-like secret power to make the cows walk away (by shouting at them) and they soon disperse. The traffic is now eased and Tommy has well and truly saved the day. Bobby is suitably impressed to let out a catchphrase (which escapes me now). This is just one scene. Many follow and they are equally as painful.
The plot of The Boys in Blue is simple. Little Botham has no crime, the police station is due to be closed, but Bobby and Tommy come across a highly sophisticated art smuggling ring and crack the case. The very fact that with a plot that simple, the film still manages to totally fuck it up and with two main actors that are possibly the most painful double act since Burke and Hare, the end result was always going to be an abomination.
Yesterday, ITV1 had an exciting première. I don't know how they managed to secure the rights, but it was a real coup. At 3pm they showed the 1972 feature film Mutiny on the Buses. A real boon for lovers of art everywhere. In all seriousness, I cannot believe they showed it again. I think it has been on at least ten times this year alone. The ITV plot synopsis made me laugh, "Stan teaches his brother in law how to drive a bus". Now while Mutiny on the Buses is hardly Agatha Christie, I still like to think that there is slightly more to the plot than that. Just about anyway.
So thank you ITV. Once again you are lighting up each weekend with good, honest, British, family fun.
