I have at last managed to get one of my all-time favourite progs on DVD: The Beeb's wonderful 1972 version of Clochemerle.The original screening was naturally way past my bedtime but I caught up with it in the 1990s and read the book too. I even went in search of the locations, thus prompting my first visit to France.
Considering that I ended up living here, you might say that Gabriel Chevallier's genial saga of sex, wine, scandal, satire, hypocrisy and more sex has a lot to answer for.
Curiously Clochemerle seems to be better known to English francophiles these days than it does to the French. Girlfriend Claire enjoyed my English copy, having never read the original.
Obvious les anglais are always going to love a comic row about a toilet: we can never resist lavatory humour. The story starts when the left-wing Monsieur le Maire of Clochemerle-en-Beaujolais decides to further his political career by erecting a cast-iron urinal directly in front of the church, to the fury of the opposition.
I have to admit that the series has dated a little. The film is distinctly scratched and there are some strange accents. But it's still an ensemble piece containing many delightful things.
There's an impressive roll-call of English character actors including Cyril Cusack, Kenneth Griffith, Wendy Hillier and Hugh Griffith, who must have adored shooting on location, being, as he was, a legendary piss-artist.
However the producers made a wise decision in casting the Gallic and gorgeous Catherine Louvel (pictured) as Judith Toumignon, belle de Clochemerle. Male Beeb viewers probably didn't know what had hit them back in 1972, though I don't suppose they minded it coming back to hit them again for another eight episodes.
It has to be said that Mademoiselle Louvel's English sounds distinctly strange, but given that her unbelievably stupid and cuckolded husband François sounds like he comes from Glasgow, I think we can give her the benefit of the doubt.
Peter Ustinov's narration remains a joy; that wonderful mixture of apology, melancholy and aristocracy, at once rich but engagingly acerbic when a point has to be made. A bit like the wine really . . .
*I ought to drop in a plug for Messrs Stojo who coughed up the double DVD promptly for a mere eight quid.
Thanks for the memory: I saw and loved the original when it first came out, and it was the first book I ever read in French. It's not quite the same in English. When we first came to live in France there were still a considerable number of Clochemerle-type loos and feuds. I'm happy for them to have more or less died out!
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