This is a great episode of an excellent ensemble piece, some of the talented cast from other Croft and Perry shows, Hi-di-Hi, It Ain't Half Hot Mum and of course Frank Williams, the vicar in Dads Army make this feel like a superior form of repertory company on great form.
It's very much a farce as Meldrum is saved from Lady Agnes' bellicose husband by Stokes the Butler, who tells him he'd a war wound in the artillery, a euphemism for a biological part or parts highly valued in both war and peace.
James deters Miss Poppy - who has a great singalong with him whilst learning the ukulele, eliciting rightful applause from the audience, by saying he can't go to the cinema due to him taking Ivy. Who he then has to take.
All these beautifully designed and crafted shenanigans lead to James and Ivy, Teddy and his servant 'friend' Rose, Lady Agnes and a young beau all going to the same film at the cinema, causing Jeffrey Holland playing a stern-faced James to take Su Pollard, playing the daffy Ivy with panache, to the floor of the cinema to hide from the assorted, illicit pairs.
This Brian Rix-style of farce works well, characters are nicely developed and there is a little bathos and pathos, one or t'other, an English teacher would know which, as Stokes tells the cook he's unable to marry her and Ivy is initially in tears when James is disinclined to take her to the pictures - but as previously observed, eventually relents.
The extraordinary contribution of the Croft and Perry scriptwriting partnership to the lexicon of British sitcoms joins Galton and Simpson, Clement and La Frenais, Harry Driver and Vince Powell - who I once had lunch with - as masters of the genre.
Whatever Happened to Likely Lads? More a case of Whatever has happened to British sit coms? Since Only Fools and Horses rode into the stable of history joining Steptoe's horse, Hercules, there's been little to laugh about. Thankfully this episode of You Rang M'Lord keeps the comic heartbeat ticking over, while we wait to be amused sometime soon by contemporary sitcom writers. And wait, and wait, and wait....
