Band Waggon Details

A Historical Curiosity for the over 50s

Since I am in the over 50 demographic, I am not qualified to comment on how this film would be received by younger viewers. My suspicion is that their reaction would be bewilderment that Arthur Askey and Stinker Murdoch could ever be perceived as entertainment. This film, like Arthur Askey, is an oddity and is an example of how nostalgia provides a rose tinted glow that distorts and deludes.

Arthur Askey's popularity continued into the 1960s when he had his own T.V. show. When I was a child I enjoyed Arthur's show and many people of my generation and older have fond memories of 'big hearted Arthur' but I can only surmise that it was because there was nothing else on at the time.

Anyone who tells you that they don't make them like they used to is right and this film is evidence of that. All I can say is thank goodness they don't make them like they used to.

[Highly rated reviewer]

Old Comics

Askey and Murdoch weren't a double act, but two individually successful comedians who hit the jackpot with this radio show based upon the conceit that the two of them were resident on the roof of the BBC in London. This would have worked well on radio, when listeners' imaginations could build on the references in the dialogue, but is not successful when translated literally to the screen. The film soon abandons it and moves into a pretty garbled plot featuring Nazi secret agents - this is 1939 - and attempts to get a popular band broadcast. It is very much of its time and place: perhaps the most striking difference between it and any similar piece made since about the 1970s is the total lack of any sexual innuendo, apart from a certain campness in some of the delivery, due to the strict rules which governed what could and couldn't be broadcast. The humour consists mainly of sight gags and word-play - tongue twisters, malapropisms, etc - and as a a result it all seems rather child-like and innocent. There's no use trying to watch this through modern eyes - it's not funny any more, and I don't think you can expect it to be. Watching it on my television in 2008, I didn't laugh once - but I can see how I might have if I were watching it in a cinema in 1939, and that, along with a certain historical interest, is possibly all you can ask of seventy year old popular entertainment.