The Plank

Two workmen carry a plank to a building site. That is the whole thing. But everywhere the plank goes it knocks something over, knocks somebody over, and starts a new chain. Across fifty-five minutes nobody says a proper sentence; there are grunts, sighs and music. Eric Sykes wrote it, directed it and acted in it. It is an attempt to rebuild the rules of silent comedy in the sixties: no dialogue, only gesture and timing. Tommy Cooper, Jimmy Edwards and Roy Castle, among the best known comics of the period, stand alongside him. It is a cult item of British television comedy: short, simple and remarkably well constructed.