Ann Way Season: Ripping Yarns - Whinfrey's Last Case

Spoiler warning: this blog post gives away the solution to the mystery.

I was in two minds about whether to include this episode in Ann Way Season because it feels a bit flippant, but will continue to do so at the risk that this blog may lose its reputation for being completely serious and never doing anything funny.

Ripping Yarns (1977 to 1979) is one of my favourite shows although only the episode The Curse of the Claw has appeared here before. I'm sure regular readers will be familiar with its premise that it is a spoof of the old schoolboy tales of our heroes of Empire and the 'great' age of Britain. The upper lips were stiff and the natives knew their place, went the idea, and the point of this series is that neither the upper lips nor the natives knew their place. It stars Michael Palin and was written by him and Terry Jones, and is therefore one of the things which come under the heading of What the Pythons Did Next.

In this episode the country is once again in trouble, and so the great and the good call on our stiff-upper-lipped her Gerald Whinfrey to save the country. Tired of doing this two or three times a week, for once he says no and instead he decides to go on holiday in a rented cottage in Cornwall. As soon as he gets off the train it is apparent that things aren't right and far from escaping the need to save the empire, he finds he has to save it yet again. The literary allusions here don't only include the schoolboy tales of derring do, but there are very strong allusions to The Famous Five going orff to the country only to find it full of bally foreign spies, and if you want televisual allusions, you could even look to the Avengers episode, Town of No Return. However I think a more obvious television antecedent for this episode could be Adam Adamant Lives, despite its apparent focus on Adamant's disapprobation of the modern world.

My absolutely favourite part is the way Whinfrey experiences that traditional Cornish hospitality in a tiny cottage, which involves dozens of servants. Frankly, I don't know how we lived in the Empire without the normal comforts of home, like about eighty gardeners to tend to the geranium bed. I also love the dozens of secret passages in Whinfrey's bedroom.

The episode has the most marvellous role for Ann Way, and frankly she takes some spotting, which is what made me in two minds about including this episode in this series of posts. You can see her in the picture which illustrates this post, and of course she has the marvellous role of Lottie who you never actually see. She runs the village pub and drives the local taxi. Even without showing any part of Lottie except her hands and part of her arms, you get the strangest impression of what she must look like, because while her arms are long enough to stretch to the steering wheel she obviously doesn't have legs to match because she has to ask Whinfrey to depress the clutch for her so that she can change gear. ALso Way plays the part with the most wonderful Cornish accent.

There is a criticism made of this episode online which I disagree with, which is that the conclusion, that it isn't actually Whinfrey who saves the Empire at all because the army are obviously all ready to capture the German agents anyway, is not a valid criticism. The entire point of the show is to spoof not only the literature of our Empire, but with the literature, the ideas that go with it. The entire point of this episode is that Whinfrey's idea that it is he who is single-handedly saving the country every week, isn't real. To criticise the episode because Whinfrey doesn't save the country is to miss the point, which is that Whinfrey doesn't actually save the country at all!

An excellent show and episode, with a hysterical use of Ann Way's acting ability.

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