Billy Liar: Billy and the Scales of Justice
This blog post represents an abortive series of posts I was going to write about actress May Warden (1891-1978). She is probably best known in the cult TV world for being the earliest-born actress to appear in Doctor Who, and she rather specialised in playing indomitable old ladies. Unfortunately I have to abort the planned series of posts because while I could find her remaining work online, much of it is shows (such as Doctor in Charge) which I don’t think are necessarily classic enough to feature here. I’m having quite a stressful time and some of her work is perhaps rather difficult for me to blog about at present, such as The Donati Conspiracy. Anyway, the series has been reduced to this single post about an episode of her last TV work.
Billy Liar (1973-4) is a two-series sitcom based on a 1959 novel by Keith Waterhouse, possibly better known in its film adaptation form. The titular Billy, bored in his life living at home and working for an undertaker, lives in a world of fantasy based on his dream of being a writer and living in the city. All three adaptations are comedies. I don’t know how popular it was at the time, but there’s a huge cast of stars and guest stars. May Warden plays Billy’s grandmother, who can always be relied on to say the wrong thing!
There is a reason I have resisted blogging about this show so far, which is that I have a difficulty with the Billy character and the way this show is a comedy. There is a difference between dreaming or day dreaming (we all do those) while still carrying on your duty to the people around you. However the comedy here is based on the fact that Billy doesn’t fulfil his duty to anyone. He has a fantasy life going on, but as a result lies to everyone around him. This doesn’t matter with his boss at the funeral parlour (played to perfection by Colin Jeavons) because he is set up to be a thoroughly unpleasant character, and is after all in a position to sack Billy, so thoroughly deserves all the problems Billy brings to him. But Billy quite frequently has several different girlfriends on the go, and lies to each and every one of them, which puts a very different, and definitely not entertaining, spin on his habitual lying.
There is also the other aspect to Billy’s lying, which is that it attracts continual abuse, and even violence, from his father and boss. In Billy and the Scales of Justice he gets given a good shake by both his father and boss because his undertaker boss’s frock coat has gone missing. Of course we get to see Billy’s fantasy built on the frock boat he has stolen, where he is walking along a fence wearing it as if in a silent film, although of course he denies he has stolen it. The level of abuse and violence he gets is uncomfortable to me personally, and you have to wonder whether Billy has started fantasising to get away in his head from his abusive father.
That said, the cast must have had huge fun making this series, because we get to see Billy’s fantasies dramatised. So the cast dress up as whatever Billy is imagining and we see it happen: for example as a kung fu master, or a wrestler, or the great lover, and so on. Each episode must also have required endless changes of costume and set, and must have taken forever!
Billy and the Scales of Justice is a rather unusual episode because once we get the argument about the missing frock coat out of the way, attention is drawn to a summons for jury duty that Billy has received. His father is, of course, certain that Billy is incapable of performing jury duty and tells him so in no uncertain terms. For the rest of the episode, the whole family, plus Billy’s boss and girlfriend rehearse a trial in their living room so that Billy will have some idea of what is involved. The trial they act out is about the theft of the frock coat and they try Billy’s mother. This is how we find out where the frock coat actually is.
It involves a relatively minor role for May Warden as the judge, because she tends to just keep falling asleep. There is a wonderful bit where she says that she has been up in front of endless judges for being drunk and disorderly and fined 40 shillings.
Billy’s fantasy for the rest of the episode is of the various members of the cast in an actual trial and found guilty, etc.
Ultimately it turns out he wrote the jury summons himself using a blank a friend at the council gave him, so that he could get time off work.
I don’t have a criticism of the specific episode beyond my comments above about the series being quite uncomfortable because of dishonesty and abuse being entertainment. The show is amusing because of the scenarios which are the backbone of it, though.
This blog is mirrored at
culttvblog.tumblr.com/archive (from September 2023) and culttvblog.substack.com (from January 2023 and where you can subscribe by email)
Archives from 2013 to September 2023 may be found at culttvblog.blogspot.com and there is an incomplete index to the tags used on the Tumblr version at https://www.tumblr.com/culttvblog/729194158177370112/this-blog
There is an index to posts on the Substack version here: https://culttvblog.substack.com/p/index-of-posts?r=1q6qo6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
About this blog: https://culttvblog.substack.com/about