At Last the 1948 Show - Series 1 Episode 1
British Film Institute • 23m
Directed by Ian Fordyce • Drama • With Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Marty Feldman, Barry Cryer, Aimi MacDonald • 1967 • 24 minutes
The very first show, which survived in David Frost’s personal archive, still manages to astonish as a bold new departure in television comedy. John Cleese’s manic performances as a bullying doctor and an unhinged secret service agent steal the show, but Marty Feldman’s debut as a performer as well as a writer is totally assured, while Graham Chapman gives his signature turn as a wrestler fighting himself. It is only six minutes in before Aimi Macdonald first delivers the immortal linking line “and now for something completely different”.
Up Next in British Film Institute
-
Tomorrow's Saturday
Directed by Michael Grigsby • Documentary • 1962 • 18 minutes
Impressions of a typical Saturday at Blackburn, a milling town in the North of England.
-
O Dreamland
Directed by Lindsay Anderson • Documentary • 1953 • 11 minutes
Lindsay Anderson’s 12–minute tour of Margate’s Dreamland funfair is immediately notable for its deliberately bleak and unattractive photography and a spare and impressionistic soundtrack. Despite the absence of a commentary, the film...
-
Refuge England
Directed by Robert Vas • Documentary • 1959 • 27 minutes
Director Robert Vas was himself a refugee from Hungary, having arrived in London only three years earlier when he received a grant from the BFI to make the film. Despite its slightly incongruous use of voiceover, the film was adopted by th...
