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Frost Report is Back (The) (TV)
R2 - United Kingdom - Network Review written by and copyright: Paul Lewis (29th October 2009). |
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The Show
 The Frost Report is Back (BBC, 2008) 
Growing out of the BBC’s popular Saturday night satirical show That Was the Week That Was (BBC, 1962-3), The Frost Report (BBC, 1966-7) offered a similar brand of irreverent and fresh satire to TW3. TW3 is sometimes cited as the first British satirical television programme (see Crisell, 2002: 123); but whereas TW3’s approach was more often than not scattershot, The Frost Report offered a more focused form of sketch-based satire, with each episode structured around a particular theme. However, the basic structure of The Frost Report mirrored that of TW3: both shows predominantly consisted of sketches and songs linked by a series of monologues. TW3’s development and popularity had been facilitated by the success in 1960 of Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett’s stage revue show Beyond the Fringe (Larsen, 2003: 98). Beyond the Fringe brought together the best comic talents from within both the Cambridge Footlights and the Oxford Revue, and throughout the 1960s satirical television shows like TW3 and The Frost Report would draw on the Oxbridge set for inspiration and talent: The Frost Report featured input from Oxbridge luminaries such as Michael Palin, John Cleese and Tim Brooke-Taylor (and, of course, Sir David Frost himself), balanced by the work of more ‘traditional’ sketch writers like Marty Feldman, Dennis Norden and Barry Cryer. 
In ‘Filth, Sedition and Blasphemy: The Rise and Fall of Television Satire’, Andrew Crisell cites the targets of TW3 as being ‘the “contemporary scene,” politics in the broadest sense—the three main parties […] and individual politicians of various hues; Britain’s lingering pretensions to be a world power […]; the church; the judiciary; the class system [….] [and] what might be termed “media culture”—parodies of various aspects of newspapers, film, advertising, and notably television itself’ (Crisell, quoted in ibid.: 99). The Frost Reportwould share many of these targets, each episode being built around a certain issue – youth, medicine, law, class, crime, authority. Each week would feature two long sketches and a number of shorter sketches based on the theme of the episode, alongside a couple of musical numbers (provided by Tom Lehrer and Julie Felix) and bridged by David Frost’s ‘Continuous Developing Monologues’ (the titular ‘Frost Report’). Although like TW3 it only ran for two series, The Frost Report has achieved a reputation as an icon of British television satire, largely thanks to the talent involved in its production. The series featured contributions from a number of established comedy writers (for example, Feldman, Norden, Cryer, Keith Waterhouse and David Nobbs), a pre-The Goodies (BBC, 1970-80; LWT, 1981) Tim Brooke-Taylor, five of the team who went on to deliver Monty Python’s Flying Circus (BBC, 1969-74) and the first onscreen pairing of Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett, who would continue to work together for the next couple of decades. 
This programme, The Frost Report is Back, was produced in 2008 to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of The Frost Report ’s win of the Golden Rose of Montreux. The Frost Report is Back begins with what is arguably the most famous sketch from The Frost Report, the classic ‘I know my place’ sketch about social class (featuring Cleese, Barker and Corbett as representatives of the upper, middle and working classes). 
Taking place almost wholly in a studio, The Frost Report is Back features Sir David Frost talking to various members of the team behind the production of The Frost Report, including Ronnie Corbett, folk singer Julie Felix, Sheila Steafle, Nicky Henson and writers David Nobbs, Barry Cryer and Dennis Norden. Other members of the team are represented via prerecorded interviews in different locations: comments are shared by Michael Palin, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Terry Jones, Sir Anthony Jay and John Cleese, who is interviewed by Frost in the Shepherd’s Bush Theatre, from where the first episode of The Frost Report was broadcast live. (The first episode of The Frost Report was also Cleese’s first appearance on television, and in interview Cleese confesses that the live broadcast was ‘when I really learned the meaning of the word “terror”’.)  
Folk singer Julie Felix joins Frost in the studio and reflects on some of the songs that she sang for the show. Felix suggests that Frost tried to encourage her to sing some lighter songs but she resisted, considering herself a protest singer. Felix also provides a performance of Bob Dylan’s ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’. In The Frost Report, Felix’s earnest contributions would often be offset by the acerbic nature of Tom Lehrer’s more light-hearted songs; however, here there is surprisingly little discussion of Lehrer’s contributions to the show, although Lehrer is represented via a great clip.  
The role of the writers is discussed, with Barry Cryer, David Nobbs and Dennis Nordern providing comments in the studio, with inserts from interviews with John Cleese, Michael Palin and Tim Brooke-Taylor. Interestingly, the writers address the ways in which the diverse backgrounds of the writers – from the university revue-style writers such as Michael Palin and Terry Jones to more ‘traditional’ comedy writers like Barry Cryer – offered a more ‘rounded’ brand of satire, and Dennis Nordern comments that ‘[t]he great thing about The Frost Report was that it was in a sense a contradiction in terms: it was a disciplined comedy show’ with the scripts written to a structured brief outlined by Anthony Jay. Nordern also asserts that The Frost Report demonstrated a ‘love of language’, and this is illustrated by a number of sketches that focus on word play – something which would become a central feature of Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett’s later show The Two Ronnies (BBC, 1971-87).  
In one way or another, all of the commentators reflect on The Frost Report’s refusal to patronise its audience. David Nobbs asserts that ‘[o]ne of the great things is that there was no dumbing down. It hadn’t been heard of. We assumed that the audience were intelligent and quick-witted, and the success of the programme proved that they were. People should take a bit of note’. Meanwhile, Tim Brooke-Taylor asserts that although The Frost Report developed out of TW3, The Frost Report featured a lighter brand of humour: ‘That Was the Week That Was was interesting and it was satirical, but we all reacted against it actually: we wanted to be silly again. And in The Frost Report, we managed to get the satire and the silliness – and the genius of bringing the two Ronnies in’. Finally, there is reflection on The Frost Report’s success in winning the Golden Rose of Montreux in 1967 and on the working relationship between Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett. The Frost Report is a hugely important part of television history, and although satire is notoriously transient many of the sketches reproduced in The Frost Report is Back are still quite timely: despite Cleese’s arguably wrong-headed claim that the success of the class sketch ‘just goes to show what a class-based society it was then. I’m not so sure if it is now, but it was then’, the famous ‘I know my place’ sketch is arguably as pertinent today as it was in 1967. Another sketch involving Cleese, Barker and Corbett sees the three performers taking the roles of judge, barrister and defendant in a courtroom. However, against type, the judge (Barker) and barrister (Cleese) speak in a Norfolk brogue and a Cockney twang respectively, whilst the defendant (Corbett) speaks in refined Received Pronunciation. In an era where even the BBC’s newsreaders have dropped Received Pronunciation for more ‘trendy’ regional accents, this sketch arguably retroactively gains a further layer of satire. 
Reflecting on the absence of satire in contemporary popular culture, Michael Palin offers what is possibly the most astute comment in the programme: ‘The Frost Report looked quite acutely at society at the time, but it was in a sort of joyful way […] whereas a lot of the best comedy now – something like The Office, Ricky Gervais’ stuff – is actually quite hard to watch. It’s dissecting a sort of lethargy that takes place in people’s lives now: nowhere to go, nothing to do. I think that’s the difference: people feel now that everything is up for grabs; we can have everything we want; we can watch everything we want; we can go where we want; we can say what we want about anybody. So what is there to make jokes about, really? Jokes are made about our boredom’. The Frost Report is Back runs for 86:30 mins (PAL). The original BBC Four television broadcast of The Frost Report is Back included a screening of the 1967 episode which won the Golden Rose of Montreux, ‘Frost Over England’; ‘Frost Over England’ is omitted from this DVD release, presumably for rights reasons.
Video
The programme is presented in its original broadcast screen ratio of 1.78:1, with anamorphic enhancement. Shot on digital video, The Frost Report is Back looks very good on this DVD, with a crisp, sharp picture and vibrant colours. The archive clips from The Frost Report are presented in their original broadcast screen ratio of 4:3 and are pillarboxed. 
Audio
The DVD contains a two-channel stereo track. This is clear and without any problems.
Extras
There is no contextual material.
Overall
A truly phenomenal programme, The Frost Report is a key show within the history of British television. This retrospective look at the series is interesting and contains reflections from a number of the show’s major participants. However, there’s a lack of engagement with the show’s position in the history of television satire and a relative lack of discussion of the show’s antecedents (Beyond the Fringe, TW3): it would have been invaluable to explain the show’s relationship with the ‘satire boom’ of the 1960s. As it is, The Frost Report is Back essentially preaches to the converted, offering behind-the-scenes reflections on the show’s production. These reflections are fascinating and delivered with warmth and sincerity, but some form of contextualisation of The Frost Report would have made The Frost Report is Back even more rewarding. Sources: Crisell, Andrew, 2002: An Introductory History of British Broadcasting. London: Routledge (Second Edition) Larsen, Darl, 2003: Monty Python, Shakespeare and English Renaissance Drama. London: McFarland (Second Edition) For more information, please visit the homepage of Network DVD.
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