The Men from the Ministry

Deep in Whitehall is a ministry department with no remit. When another department can't handle something, they call this department. But this department is staffed by loafers and fools.

It's ultimately based on a BBC radio show that ran from 1962 through 1977. It was sufficiently popular that versions were made in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and South Africa. This movie was produced in South Africa, and bears many of the same personnel, from writer-director-head-of-department Tom Meehan.

The humor is what in America would be called baggy pants burlesque, filled with buxom women, double entendre, funny voices, blackface, and poorly executed pratfalls. I can't comment on the BBC production, but this is contemptuously and contemptibly old-faced even for fifty years ago when the Goon Show occasionally took aim at this sort of comedy. Perhaps the fact this was the South African version; but it also features a mediocre song by folsingers Des and Dawn Lindberg, whose first album had been banned by the South African government in 1967.