Oh Brother!

Revolving around a well-meaning but bumbling novice in an English monastery, the Britcom Oh Brother! (which ran on the BBC between 1968-1970 and eventually included 19 episodes and one short special) stars the rangy, rubber-faced Derek Nimmo (who specialized in quirky clerical roles) as Brother Dominic, backed by film veteran Felix Aylmer as the stoic prior and Derek Francis as put-upon sub-prior Father Matthew, who suffers most from Dominic's ineptitude. This extra-less two-disc collection compiles the eight surviving programs—the black-and-white series one premiere, in which Colin Gordon had Francis' role, and the seven color episodes of series three. Most follow a standard formula, in which Dominic—a sort of holy innocent—creates some potential catastrophe that turns out to be a blessing for the community, and almost all of the shows are confined to the monastery and its immediate locale (although in one episode, Dominic and Matthew travel to the Vatican to plead the case of their house's patron saint). The scripts are, to be honest, verbose and rather bland, and much of your reaction to the series will depend on your tolerance for Nimmo's goofy shtick, which was much appreciated in England at the time but has aged badly and doesn't travel terribly well. So, while one might regret that the majority of the episodes of Oh Brother! (six from the first series, and all seven of the second) were purged from the BBC archives and irretrievably lost, the quality of the eight that have survived suggests that no comedy classics were destroyed in any case. Optional. (F. Swietek)