The Morecambe & Wise Show - Series 6
DVD Review from 2009
Cover
Eric and Ern
Play what Ernie wrote
Series 6 boasts more famous people stepping up to appear on the show, some of them even daring to appear in one of Ernie’s plays. They include, Francis Mathews, Cilla Black, Percy Thrower, John Mills, Mrs. Mills and Tom Jones.
It seems that the boys were toying with changing the format in this series as we see in the first episode. Before the usual banter between them, there is a short sketch with Eric and at the piano. I am not sure this works and I don’t think they did, as the next episode its back to the chat from the top of the show.
The plays what Ernie wrote are still part of the show, although not every episode has one. The first one, House of Terror, has some classic visual gags and one-liners, with Eric and Ern looking like they are enjoying things.
In fact this whole series see’s the boys laughing to themselves, looking relaxed and ready to go off in random directions. I some cases there are cuts which spoil things. We are not sure if these are because of material dropped or because Eric started ad-libbing.
One scene is particularly bad and has Eric reading out Ernie’s family tree. After a few gags Eric points to the sheet of paper, laughs and is about to say something when suddenly we are thrown into the middle of a Kenny Ball number.
Eric plays to the camera more throughout this series, with one particular shot that had us laughing out loud. We had heard the sketch, about someone in the audience wanting to shoot Eric, on the radio, but never seen it on TV. Mid way through, Eric peers over Ern’s shoulder, smiles at the camera and gleefully says “Heeeelllooooo!”, as though he’s just seen you and recognised you. Brilliant.
Other scenes to watch out for are the car accessory shop (nice horn work) Bobo the glove puppet (both of them can’t help laughing through most of this), Top of the form and Eric and Ern as backing singers to Tom Jones.
Overall though, this is yet another great series with good clean video transfer (we will ignore the slight glitch in one scene!) and nice audio.
Still no extras, which is a great shame, but go out and grab yourself a copy now, or even better, why not try and win a copy in our competition coming very soon…
Episode Guide© morecambeandwise.com 2009Back To Reviews