Title Details

Hancock's Half Hour: The Very Best Episodes Volume 1
Buy Rights Online Interested in buying rights? Click here to make an offer

Rights Contact Login For More Details

More About This Title Hancock's Half Hour: The Very Best Episodes Volume 1

  • English

English

In the first of their quartet of classics, Sid’s Mystery Tours, Sid talks Hancock into becoming the director of his guided tours company—but it doesn’t even possess a coach. The Wild Man of the Woods shows Hancock’s desire to get away from it all. It leads him to camp first in a bus shelter on Clapham Common, and then in a bit of forest rented from Sid. 23 Railway Cuttings is a scene of boredom and inactivity as the occupants try to while away a British Sabbath in Sunday Afternoon at Home, whereas, in The Poetry Society, an evening with a group of Hancock’s new avant-garde friends produces gems of abstract poetry, not only from the group but also from Sid and Bill. Featuring a star cast that includes Sid James, Bill Kerr, Warren Mitchell, Kenneth Williams, Hattie Jacques, and Fenella Fielding, these are four very special episodes which show the master of misery at his very best, as chosen by Galton and Simpson, the masters of mirth.

2 CDs. 2 hrs.

  • English

English

Ray Galton and Alan Simpson met in a sanatorium in Surrey, where they were both being treated for TB. Ray Galton remembers noticing the six-foot-four Simpson and thinking he looked surprisingly large. During two years in the same ward, they listened to comedy shows together and also wrote a series of their own, creating a radio room in a linen cupboard. They decided to get a professional opinion of their work and sent a sketch they had written called The Pirate Sketch to the BBC. They were asked to go in for an interview, and soon found themselves writing for the sketch show Happy Go Lucky. Over the next two years they continued to write sketches for a number of big names, before coming up with the idea for Hancock’s Half Hour. Although the BBC took some persuading, eventually the show was scheduled, initially for radio but later as a television series. A phenomenally successful 10 years later, Galton and Simpson were themselves very well known names. After Hancock’s Half Hour they wrote Comedy Playhouse for the BBC, out of which came their second huge television and radio hit, Steptoe & Son. In 1977 they wrote The Galton & Simpson Playhouse, produced by Yorkshire Television for ITV.
loading