After That, This

1 9 7 5 (UK)

The curious image of an egg-timer full of eggs opened After That, This week after week, and it set the tone for what followed.

More whimsical than satirical, the sketches tried to ape Monty Python by dispensing with punch lines. In one, Eleanor Bron disrupts a dinner party by pretending to be a cat. In another, John Bird finds Bron dying of thirst in the desert and instead of going for help indulges in vacuous upper-class chit-chat.

Another sketch, told in the form of opera, has Bron’s masseuse fretting that the client she has just made love to (Derek Fowlds) might be her long-lost son.

The humour was more sophisticated than other shows on offer at the time, and everyone played their parts brilliantly, particularly Bron, whose talent for detailed comic characterisations was never used to better effect than here.

John Bird
Eleanor Bron
Derek Fowlds