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As one of the original Goon Show team, Michael Bentine helped revolutionise
radio comedy (though he left before the show enjoyed its greatest popularity).
His madcap mind and anything-goes style first found small-screen success with
the wacky children's programme The Bumblies (BBC, 1954) before he switched
channels to appear with fellow-Goon Peter Sellers in the Dick Lester-directed
Yes, It's the Cathode-Ray Tube Show! (1957), one of several ITV attempts to find
a visual complement to the Goons' aural style. Bentine and Lester's subsequent
After Hours (ITV, 1958-59), a hotch-potch of sketches, stand-up routines and
special guest stars, paved the way for Bentine's most successful foray into this
territory.
It's a Square World employed location filming, ingenious special effects and
elaborate models to realise the more extreme visions from the imaginations of
Bentine and his co-writer John Law. Ranging from gentle satire to surreal
slapstick, the fast-moving agenda was anchored by Bentine, usually appearing as
a hapless authority figure trying manfully to remain calm in the face of a
conveyor belt of unlikely eccentrics and lunatic situations. Recurring
characters included Oil Sheiks speaking in a cod-Arabic language of Bentine's
own invention; feuding magicians; inept Russian spies and incident-prone
Egyptologists. Themes included the military, the United Nations, uncharted lands
and the BBC itself.
Skits were often linked by Bentine as a newsreader introducing stories and
introducing assorted correspondents in the field. Memorable moments included the
BBC Centre portrayed as a POW camp that held the Corporation's creative staff to
prevent them defecting to ITV; the Slabodian mountaineering team's attempt to
scale the Woolwich gasometer; the Triffid invasion of the BBC; and the sinking
of the House of Commons by a Chinese junk.
Many of the themes and character types were echoed later by the Monty Python
team, especially Bentine's linking newsreader and his preoccupations with the
military and bizarre officialdom (a Square World sketch featuring the Ministry
of Holes predates the Pythons' Ministry of Silly Walks). The series was hugely
successful, with a 1963 special edition winning the coveted Golden Rose of
Montreux.
1977 saw one last visit in Michael Bentine's Square World (tx. 19/4/1977), a
pilot for a putative (but unrealised) series. In the wake of Monty Python, the
links between the two series seemed even more obvious, and the concluding
sketch, featuring witches and wizards working in the RAF during WWII, could have
easily slotted in among the Pythonalia.
Dick Fiddy
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1. The ancient game of boggling (4:30)
