I accidentally came across this article tonight and was reminded of the show that probably got more laughs out of me, my family, and my friends than any other sit-com ever. For its time, it was extremely outrageous, and pushed the limits. In my late teens and early twenties when watching it, I fell absolutely in love with all of the guys in each episode. I never realized before tonight that John Cleese and Eric Idle had anything to do with the series. It all makes sense now (or nonsense).
Over the years I've searched for any mention of the show, but have never found a trace on TV or in video stores. I wonder why nobody ever brought it back. I thought I might find it in PBS catalogs or something, but nada.
At the moment, I recall holding my sides laughing at the episode with the hearse mixup (the boys owned a hearse for their own use, but someone thought it was a real hearse and deposited an occupied casket into the back of it, which wasn't discovered until after one of them, George Layton I think, was driving down the road, and every time he drove over a bump, the body's feet went up into the air.) I also recall the episode in which one of the boys (I think Upton) was trying to learn how to deliver a baby by practising on a chair with a doll or teddy bear. Then there was the episode where the boys got the obnoxious Lawrence Marwood Bingham drunk before he was scheduled to play the organ at a funeral. Bingham ended up singing "On the Sunny Side of the Street" and making an ass of himself, much to the delight of the boys and the audience. I wish the episodes were listed in the IMDb.
Ah, those were the days. It would be great if someone dug up those old episodes and either put them back on TV or sold them as videos--say, three or four episodes per video.
I wonder what happened to the members of the cast. The only two names I've ever seen outside the series are Jonathan Lynn and Helen Fraser. Lynn's name made it to the bigtime, but I haven't heard of Fraser in any movies in years (since "Start the Revolution Without Me" starring Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland).
