Porridge [Doing Time] ***½ (1979, Ronnie Barker, Richard Beckinsale, Peter Vaughan, Fulton Mackay, Brian Wilde, Sam Kelly) – Classic Movie Review 4772

Co-writer/ director Dick Clement’s funny 1979 film prison comedy Porridge [Doing Time] is a most entertaining, above-par transfer of the much-loved Seventies BBC TV sitcom about the inmates and warders of HM Slade Prison in darkest Cumbria. Porridge seemed to run and run, but actually it enjoyed only three seasons, with just 20 episodes (1974-1977).

It stars the irreplaceable Ronnie Barker and Richard Beckinsale (as cellmate jailbirds Norman Stanley Fletcher and Lennie Godber), Peter Vaughan (as ‘Genial’ Harry Grout) and Sam Kelly (as ‘Bunny’ Warren), and Fulton Mackay and Brian Wilde (as warders Mr Mackay (and Mr Barrowclough) re-creating their extremely popular small-screen roles in a fairly good story about using a prisoners versus an all-star celebrity team soccer match as a cover for an escape bid.

The Dick Clement-Ian La Frenais dialogue is as sharp and funny as on TV, while the tale, though over-extended and soft-centred, just holds. Barker and Beckinsale hold the centre firm but Mackay steals the show as the chief prison officer.

It is one of the last of the British Sixties and Seventies TV comedy series spinoffs to get a movie adaptation – one of the regular features of the British movie landscape of the time – though Rising Damp was filmed the following year.

Gorden Kaye as Dines.

Also in the cast are Geoffrey Bayldon as the Governor, Julian Holloway as Bainbridge, Gorden Kaye as Dines, Elizabeth Knight, Jackie Pallo Jr, Zoot Money, Philip Locke, Ken Jones, Daniel Peacock, Barrie Rutter, Oliver Smith and Christopher Godwin.

RIP true British character actor Peter Vaughan (4 April 1923 – 6 December 2016). He appeared as Harry Grout in only three episodes, but the TV role and the ensuing film brought him a great deal of public recognition.

RIP Ronnie Barker (1929–2005), Richard Beckinsale (1947–1979), Peter Vaughan (1923 – 2016), Fulton Mackay (1922–1987), Brian Wilde (1927–2008), Sam Kelly (1943–2014) and Geoffrey Bayldon (7 January 1924 – 10 May 2017).

Richard Beckinsale has a memorial plaque in the actors’ church St Paul’s in Covent Garden, London. He was only 31 when he died of a heart attack on 19 March 1979. Ronnie Barker said: ‘He was so loved. He hadn’t done much but he was so loved that there was a universal sort of grief that went on.’

RIP much loved Gorden Kaye, who died on 23 January 2017, aged 75.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4772

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

Gorden Kaye in Porridge.