Ian MacNaughton, “Out of the Trees” (1975)
Huge surprise when I was surfing Youtube.com one day: a pilot for an abandoned TV show written by former Monty Python man Graham Chapman and rising star script-writer Douglas Adams of “The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” fame! The pilot film was thought lost for a long time but happy serendipity decreed that a low-quality recording of the original master tape be made and it is this humble if overlooked recording that has survived to the present.
Billed as “A British Rail Film”, the pilot episode opens as long-haul passenger journey in which three sets of passengers share a berth and engage in odd conversations. Two of these passengers are a voice-over actor Michael (Roger Brierly) and a links man Ken (Graham Chapman) whose conversation wends from a documentary the actor has done of the exploits of Ghengis Khan across Mongolia, several Central Asian and European states, and finally Britain itself where Ghengis (sic) Khan sets about remaking the country in his own name. From there the episode dives into a skit about bureaucrats in fire-fighter uniforms trying to make speeches and chiding one another about the correct way to address their audience while a junior civil servant leaps about yelling that a nearby building is on fire. Concluding the episode is a skit about a young couple in love who pluck a peony from a tree and are immediately accosted by two coppers who harass them over stealing private property while just down the road there is mayhem as an elderly woman is bashed by a thug, another yob steals a man’s bicycle and several punch-ups break out. The police officers’ attempt to apprehend the couple leads to a chain reaction of emergencies and call-outs to the paramedics, the fire service, emergency services, the army, the navy, the airforce, the bomb squad … all resulting in explosions galore that all but finish off the entire planet. While Earth is consumed in a fiery holocaust, two bureaucrats, the last survivors on the planet, complement one another on their speeches.
Unfortunately the episode is no great masterpiece: it feels rather stale in parts and some sketches are too long and the dialogue in them too contrived, droll and twee. The usual Monty Python satirical targets make their appearance and while they are funny, the sketches lack freshness and gaiety. Graham Chapman was obviously missing the Monty Python TV series, the team probably having broken up at the time, never to reunite for another series, and his contributions look rather like those skits from the series that originally ended up on the cutting-room floor. The best skits are the peony-stealing skit that features Mark Wing-Davey as one of the errant peony-pickers and the parts about Ghengis Khan. Apparently not all of the pilot episode ended up on the low-quality surviving tape and there are sections missing from Ghengis Khan’s tale. The dialogue can be clever and silly.
Women engaged in social one-upmanship, an apparently innocent action engendering severe consequences for the planet, bureaucratic bungling leading to disaster, a ruthless and bloodthirsty dictator wanting a sea-change from all the excitement of conquering the known world, pillaging towns and raping virgins … they must have all looked very good on paper but translated to the screen, the result is uneven. Compared to many modern comedies though, even when average this film still pulls quite a few laughs from unusual juxtapositions of ideas and issues.
The significant historical value of the film is that it brings together Douglas Adams and actors Simon Jones and Mark Wing-Davey who became associated with Adams’ “The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” saga.