 With the guarantee of a lazily assured performance and a string of
appearances as dead-pan comic foil on the receiving end of some formidable
television actress (Wendy Craig, Penelope Keith, Judy Dench), Geoffrey Palmer
appears to have perfected the art of the telling understatement.
His first TV role in comedy was ITV's popular The Army Game (1957-61),
featuring a platoon of misfit national service soldiers, but as a jobbing actor
through the 1960s he appeared as doctors, policemen and professors in multiple
episodic dramas: including No Hiding Place (ITV, 1959-67), The Avengers (ITV,
1961-69) and Z Cars (BBC, 1962-78). An early performance of note was his urbane,
liberal-minded resident of a suburban community who suddenly finds himself
leading a vigilante group against some local hooligans in Julian Symons' dark
and revealing play Tigers of Subtopia (ITV, tx. 21/10/1968).
Although David Nobbs' The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (BBC,
1976-79) was very much the domain of its star Leonard Rossiter, as the titular
fantasising, middle-aged office slave, Palmer's appearances as Perrin's
military-minded brother-in-law Jimmy, forever on the scrounge, remain memorable
(particularly his catch-line, "Bit of a cock-up on the catering front"). When
the cast (minus Rossiter) returned for The Legacy of Reginald Perrin (BBC,
1996), beginning with Reggie's funeral, Palmer's role was expanded to head the
line-up, presenting the Perrin mixture much as before, with the usual
frustrations and mix-ups but without the Rossiter raison d'être.
Between the Reginald Perrins, he developed into a familiar prime-time face,
starting off with Carla Lane's comedy-drama Butterflies (BBC, 1978-83), about a
housewife hovering on the brink of adultery. The lugubrious Palmer TV image was
brought to the fore here as Wendy Craig's boring but safe husband, oblivious to
the needs of his romantic wife. With Craig's emotionally-defeated wife and
mother, given to sudden outbursts of screwed-up intensity even over an evening
meal, all Palmer could do was react with casual bafflement.
While Butterflies was quite a success during its run, Lane's The Last Song
(BBC, 1981; 1983) was more irritating than interesting. Here he was cast as a
50-year-old doctor trapped between his nagging wife and his nagging young
mistress, with little to do except look like a depressed bloodhound.
Thankfully, Fairly Secret Army (Channel 4, 1984-86) and Hot Metal (ITV, 1986;
1988) arrived to liven things up. In the former, written by Nobbs, he was Major
Harry Truscott, an extension of Reggie's brother-in-law character who embarks on
a madcap scheme to raise a secret army to save Britain from various imagined
threats. The familiar Nobbs style was in evidence, with Palmer delivering his
dialogue in short telegraphic bursts, like a pea-shooter.
Hot Metal was a zany Fleet Street spoof set in a fictitious newsroom and
revolving around the friction between the deposed old-style editor Palmer and
Robert Hardy's sleazy, downmarket new editor/proprietor. In a manic satire
parodying the more outrageous tabloids, the leading players seemed unsuitably
cast, with Palmer the baffled foil to Hardy's over-the-top grotesque.
Nevertheless, he played the editor in rich style, achieving precisely the right
suggestion of a mannered insolence still intact, but beginning to fray badly at
the edges. He also got many of the best lines in a script which veered
erratically between dialogue that was funny, and lines that tended to undermine
the series' pretensions to serious social satire. Richard Wilson replaced him
for the second series.
He returned to middle-class situation comedy in partnership with Penelope
Keith for the unenterprising Executive Stress (ITV, 1986-88). Bickering between
professional married types in the workplace seemed to be the main theme, with
Palmer as an experienced publishing executive whose wife becomes his business
equal.
Bob Larbey's sitcom A Fine Romance (ITV, 1981-84), featuring Judi Dench and
Michael Williams as a couple of adults stumbling their way towards a
relationship, was hauled virtually intact into the 1990s under the title As Time
Goes By (BBC, 1992-2002). Here, Dench and Palmer were the couple who re-kindle
their wartime romance in later life. Their bumpy on-off courtship, full of minor
misunderstandings, relied on the will-they, won't-they get together formula (as
if the outcome was ever in any doubt). The series, however, was neatly made and
nicely acted, and was likely to appeal because it fitted a familiar niche in
programming rather than for any intrinsic merit.
Throughout his television work, the imperturbable Palmer continues to be the
real strength behind each programme, often doing some fine rescue work on
otherwise forgettable scripts.
Tise Vahimagi
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FILM & TV CREDITS
