Thrilling Days of Yesteryear

“…as it says in the Good Book…”

As a result of his appearances on the successful sitcoms All Gas and Gaiters and Oh Brother!, actor Derek Nimmo was fast becoming one of Britain’s best-loved performers;  so much so that when Nimmo was named Showbusiness Personality of the Year by the Variety Club of Great Britain for 1970, both series were cited when the actor received this accolade in March 1971.  Brother, however, had been cancelled in 1970 after three series, and Gaiters would go off the air not too long after—so in the meantime, the BBC kept Nimmo busy with a talk show entitled If It’s Saturday It Must Be Nimmo in addition to regular appearances on the radio show Just a Minute.

The writers of Oh Brother!, David Climie and Austin Steele, had also gone their separate ways: Climie worked on several comedy pilots that went nowhere (one of which, Keep ‘Em Rolling, starred Nimmo as a 19th century photography enthusiast) while Steele contributed sketch material to The Two Ronnies and Dave Allen at Large.  They teamed up again temporarily and collaborated on a comedy pilot entitled Under and Over that starred the Irish vocal trio The Bachelors as Irish navvies working on the London Underground—despite being showcased on Comedy Playhouse, however, their efforts led to only one series in 1971.

1972 found Climie and Steele discussing future projects, and they found themselves returning time and time again to the idea of an Oh Brother! sequel.  Despite the show’s healthy ratings, the BBC cancelled the sitcom for fear that the idea had pretty much played out—so the two scribes put their heads together for a new scenario that would allow their main character, Brother Dominic, to escape the confines of Mountacres Priory.  The solution came to the writers almost in a flash: why not promote the well-meaning but klutzy monk by ordaining him and allowing him to leave to pursue a new career as Father Dominic?

The Beeb was anxious to keep their fair-haired boy Nimmo working, and commissioned Climie and Steele to write a set of seven scripts for what would eventually be called Oh Father! in early 1973.  It was decided that in addition to bringing back the newly-ordained Father Dominic, two of Brother’s other main characters, Father Anselm (Felix Aylmer) and Father Matthew (Derek Francis), would return for the sitcom’s inaugural episode, “The World, My Parish.”  In this first show, Fathers Anselm and Matthew are stunned by the news of accident-prone Dominic’s ordination (Father Matthew: “I consider this elevation to be the most bizarre since Caligula created his horse a consul of Rome!”) but their state of shock turns to delight when they realize that their blundering novice will now become someone else’s headache.  That someone else is Father Harris (Laurence Naismith), the parish priest at St. Bede’s in the sleepy little suburb of Petherbridge Spa, who has agreed to take on Dominic as his new curate.  (The Harris character is slightly reminiscent of that of the Bishop on All Gas and Gaiters: a man content with his station in life and the creature comforts that come with his position.)  Father Harris’ staff—consisting of housekeeper Cassandra Carr (Pearl Hackney), a strict Catholic who misquotes the Bible at every opportunity (her catchphrase is the title of this post), and handyman Walter (David Kelly), a stereotypical Irish ne’er-do-well who proves amazingly adept at avoiding work—also find themselves having to cope with the destruction generated by the one-man-disaster-area that is Father Dominic Billington.

Actor Laurence Naismith was already a familiar face to audiences, with appearances in films like Diamonds are Forever and Young Winston—in addition to his co-starring role as Judge Fulton on TV’s The Persuaders (1971-72), with Roger Moore and Tony Curtis.  (Father would be his first major situation comedy role.)  His co-stars had a bit more experience in buffoonery: Hackney was married to comic Eric Barker, and appeared alongside Steptoe and Son’s Harry H. Corbett in his sitcom The Best Things in Life and in the radio version (she played Mrs. Pike) of Dad’s Army.  Kelly—who American audiences might remember as the inept tradesman O’Reilly in the classic Fawlty Towers episode “The Builders”—honed his situation comedy chops as Cousin Enda in Me Mammy and as the storytelling “Dead Man” in Tales of the Lazy Acre (both series starred character actor Milo O’Shea).  (Kelly later became a regular on Robin’s Nest, the Man About the House spin-off starring Richard O’Sullivan…but his career really took off when he essayed the role of Michael O’Sullivan in the film Waking Ned Devine.)

Oh Father! debuted over BBC-1 on September 12, 1973—but the viewing public’s reaction was considerably muted, with the first episode garnering a rather anemic rating of 5.3 million viewers.  The press reaction was scarcely kinder—critic Alan Coren described the character of Father Dominic in The Times as “a grotesque stereotype who having been given the care of a certain number of immortal souls, then goes on to spend his time walking into wardrobes, falling into puddles and driving into coal carts.”  (Coren also went on to argue that Dominic’s shenanigans worked better against the Mountacres Priory backdrop featured on the original Brother.)  Though the numbers steadily improved with each subsequent episode, the audience’s tepid reaction (they felt that the show wasn’t “as amusing as Oh Brother!” and not “as good as All Gas and Gaiters”) convinced the Beeb that the concept had most assuredly run its course; the sitcom would not return for a second series.

Like Brother and Gaiters, Oh Father! has been made available on Region 2 DVD—and unlike the previous series in the Derek Nimmo trilogy, all seven episodes remain extant.  Having previously watched the entire series a few weekends back, I’d like to offer a minority opinion that Oh Father! is a rare example of a spin-off actually improving on the original source material; letting Father Dominic’s incompetence blossom outside the monastery keeps the comedy from getting stale, and several of the entries in the series are actually better than those offered up in Brother (though admittedly, the fact that there are many missing Brothers colors this view somewhat).  The presence of Brother co-stars Aylmer and Francis makes “The World, My Parish” a enjoyable romp; the two actors also appear in the final episode, “Bid Time Return,” in which Father Harris blackmails the two men into allowing Father Dominic (with Walter in tow) spend a week in retreat at the Priory.  But the standout episode is “Just Impediment”: Father Dominic performs his first wedding (the bride is played by Man About the House’s Sally Thomsett) and then learns to his horror that he may have made a mistake during the proceedings and races after the young couple before they engage in the traditional consummation ritual during the honeymoon.  (A similar plot was used in an episode of Bless Me, Father—“A Back to Front Wedding”—but the denouement in “Impediment” is much, much funnier.)  As always, spotting familiar Britcom faces in these episodes is a tremendous source of fun: Ballard Berkeley of Fawlty Towers plays a doctor in “Sufficient unto the Day” and comedy legend Ted Ray plays Father Dominic’s con-man uncle in “The Old Adam” (Pamela Cundell, Mrs. Fox on Dad’s Army, is also in this one).

Watching the entire series of Oh Father! hasn’t changed my opinion, however, that Derek Nimmo’s finest hour on the small screen was All Gas and Gaiters; despite his new surroundings, his Father Dominic is sometimes too hard to take and in watching him I can’t help but be reminded of Frank Spencer (Michael Crawford) on Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em.  (Actually, it’s a pity that someone didn’t think of pitting the two characters in a single episode of Mothers to see who could create the most mayhem in a single half hour.)  As for Nimmo, he soldiered on in sitcoms, appearing in My Honourable Mrs. (1975), Life Begins at Forty (1978-80) and Third Time Lucky (1982), as well as another popular “chat show,” Just a Nimmo.  An appearance in a 1984 television adaptation of the venerable stage farce See How They Run once again put a clerical collar on the actor (he played the Rev, Arthur Humphrey), and may have inspired him to take another crack at ecclesiastical humor with the 1986 series Hell’s Bells (where he essayed the part of Dean Selwyn Makepeace).  Nimmo came to a tragic end in 1999, when a fall at his home brought on a case of pneumonia from which he never recovered.  His legacy of hilarity in Gaiters, Brother and Father would later influence other church-related Britcoms, among them Bless Me, Father, All in Good Faith and The Vicar of Dibley.

- Posted by Ivan G. Shreve, Jr. - 7:56:18 AM - comment []