BBC's "Wednesday Play" series will always be one of the most harrowing experiences television offered in the twentieth century. This presentation is no exception.
Marty Feldman was always billed as a comedian, though I always felt the only bit of talent he had was his distictively creepy, insect-eyed appearance. Here he excersises his darker side, by playing an insane sadist, mounting a frightening verbal assault, then a deadly threat with a gun, on a helpless, innocent stranger he's locked into railway coach with. He spews angry rubbish about what a righteous victim of class inequality as he tortures his apparently decently middle class prey.
In the second section he breaks into a home a poor scared woman who's mentally imballanced herself. The tables are turned around in time when they both find they have been in mad houses at one time, and she tries scaring and controlling him.
In a non sequitur ending, he flees the house, and meets his double or twin in the back of an auto with two total strangers in it. If you're contemptuous of your audience enough to force this hour of misery on them, why not have a pointless conclusion. Just so it ends! One is very hard pressed to have a pleasurable go of it with this series, always some heavy-handed liberal effort to make it's suffering audience "think", or something. This might have been their concept of a "comedy". Nasty stuff.
Marty Feldman was always billed as a comedian, though I always felt the only bit of talent he had was his distictively creepy, insect-eyed appearance. Here he excersises his darker side, by playing an insane sadist, mounting a frightening verbal assault, then a deadly threat with a gun, on a helpless, innocent stranger he's locked into railway coach with. He spews angry rubbish about what a righteous victim of class inequality as he tortures his apparently decently middle class prey.
In the second section he breaks into a home a poor scared woman who's mentally imballanced herself. The tables are turned around in time when they both find they have been in mad houses at one time, and she tries scaring and controlling him.
In a non sequitur ending, he flees the house, and meets his double or twin in the back of an auto with two total strangers in it. If you're contemptuous of your audience enough to force this hour of misery on them, why not have a pointless conclusion. Just so it ends! One is very hard pressed to have a pleasurable go of it with this series, always some heavy-handed liberal effort to make it's suffering audience "think", or something. This might have been their concept of a "comedy". Nasty stuff.
