Sergeant Bilko has stood the test of time

mkb-8

I had just watched the fine blu ray re-issue of 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' (the superior 1951 version)and hearing Gort the robot utter those immortal words 'Klaatu barada nikto' I recalled the episode of the Phil Silvers Show where Sergeant Bilko persuades the hapless Doberman to pose as an alien, wandering about the camp muttering the same phrase.

Fortunately I had recorded the show when it was last aired in the UK by the BBC, back in 1997, although I hadn't watched it since. However, that space alien Doberman episode proved so hilarious that I watched another the next day, and another each day after that, until I had viewed all ninety shows in my collection. Not once did my interest flag.

To say that the program is consistently amusing and inventive is a gross understatement. In my opinion it is the best TV comedy of all time and just as funny now as it was in the mid to late 1950s when it first aired.

Much of that is down to the superb cast: comic genius Phil Silvers, that lugubrious master of deadpan Paul Ford (Colonel Hall), the all too easily duped Sergeants Grover and Ritzik (personal favorites of mine) and of course the platoon members, all wonderful comic turns in their own right.

The other great plus for the show is that it was recorded on film, so the picture looks as good today as it did at the time of original transmission, when I can remember my late father chuckling at Bilko on our little 17 inch screen TV. (By contrast, the best BBC comedy of the period, Hancock's Half Hour, was performed live and cine-recorded from a 405 line TV screen during transmission, so surviving recordings are of relatively poor quality.)

Finally, I must pay tribute to the writers of the show, among them a young Neil Simon. Many of the comic situations they employed are still a staple of TV comedy today and were no doubt also in use on the vaudeville stage in the decades before television became the dominant form of entertainment.

score 10/10

mkb-8 21 August 2012

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2662115/