My list of choices for your quibbling entertainment concludes. Part one was here, and part two here. As with my top 100 albums and books, this is a ‘nobrow’ list, in that it comprises neither highbrow wank or lowbrow cheese.1 The greatest art is either popular with a profound heart, or cultured with a friendly hand, and in both cases always has a touch of innocence to it, a word which appears a few times in this list, particularly in this final part which, for some reason, is clustered with comedies and cartoons…
68: Pinter, Harold. Ives, Kenneth. The Birthday Party
Grotesque, unsettling, surreal, awful and hypnotic story about two men sent to… erm… a man is staying at a guest house… and… there is a birthday party… and… a drum… and… um…
There are two silences. One when no word is spoken. The other when perhaps a torrent of language is being employed. The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don't hear. It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, anguished or mocking smokescreen. When true silence falls, we are still left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.
Harold Pinter was a genius. This definitive BBC production, starring Pinter himself, can be found on a BFI box-set which contains The Tea Party, A Slight Ache and The Basement.
69: Pollak, Kay. As it is in Heaven.
An almost literally heartbreaking story of a famous conductor who ends up in a tiny Swedish town where he teaches a local choir to die in song. Almost cheesy, as some of the most heart-rending stories are.
70: Potter, Dennis. Pennies from Heaven.
Liberating tale of a music score salesmen who goes on the lam. Characters regularly break out in song, miming 30s hits. Part of a trilogy, in a way, with The Singing Detective (40s music) and Lipstick on Your Collar (50s music), although this one is the rawest, most uplifting and — the delight of Potter (like Pinter) — the most morally surprising. The US remake with Steve Martin was alright — worth watching for some of Christopher Walken’s greatest dancing — but for Gawd’s sake start here.
Other Potter highlights include Brimstone and Treacle (the original Play for Today version), Blue Remembered Hills, his adaptation of The Mayor of Casterbridge and his final interview with Melvyn Bragg.
71: Python, Monty. Monty Python’s Flying Circus (particularly series I & II).
Full of duds (many of which are Eric Idle’s unpleasant contributions2) and gags that you’ve seen a hundred times, but there is a—I dunno—a divinely mad thread through these early shows that has never been equalled. A sense of perfect psychological freedom. Don’t you want to fuck around like this? Every day? Isn’t this how life should be?
Quest for the Holy Grail and Life of Brian are also hilarious of course. Some of my favourite minor characters are Tim the Enchanter (‘Quite’) in the former, and the Boring Prophet and Jailer (‘we’ve got lumps of it round the back’) in the latter.
72: Raimi, Sam. Evil Dead II
Masterpiece of butcherous silliness starring Bruce Campbell’s amazing head. I can’t think of any head on earth that I enjoy seeing suffer more.
