Acting
Outside Edge is a British sitcom created and written by Richard Harris, based on his eponymous 1979 stage play. Two couples with contrasting attitudes – the uptight and conservative Roger and Miriam Dervish, and the bohemian and adventurous Kevin and Maggie Costello – attend the local Brent Park Cricket Club who meet every Saturday. Other members include lecherous womaniser Dennis Broadley, timid and naive Nigel, snobbish solicitor Alex Harrington, and browbeaten husband and later father Bob Willis, along with a number of others who regularly appear throughout.
John Cleese is hilarious as the descendant of Sherlock Holmes in this modern detective drama of international power politics and intrigue. Unlike his illustrious grandfather however, he only succeeds in bungling every job he organizes. Also stars Arthur Lowe as the "bionic" grandson of Dr. Watson, Stratford Johns as the Commissioner of Police, and Connie Booth as Mrs. Hudson.
In this high-camp farce, Goons legend Spike Milligan stars as William Topaz McGonagall, an unemployed Scottish weaver and aspiring poet laureate who falls in love with Queen Victoria - a brilliant cameo by Peter Sellers - and thereafter devotes his banal poetry to her. Though McGonagall's solicitations are rejected by the Queen, it doesn't stop the turgid prose, and pathos, from overflowing as McGonagall hilariously attempts to become the greatest poet in the land. The image of the bad poet, trapped by his romanticism and inspired by a muse with a tin ear, appealed mightily to Spike Milligan, and this cult British spoof features the Goons show maestro at his ridiculous, genre-defying best.
