Tales of the Unexpected (TV Series) Where's Your Sense of Humour? (1983) User Reviews

The joker is wild

[safenoe · 7/10 · 14 November 2016]

Where's your sense of humour was screened just a month before Thatcher's landslide victory in the 1983 general election (although the Conservative's share of the popular vote actually declined from 1979).

Here George is a practical joker run amok and he delights pranking friends big time. Kind of a just desserts episode. The ending is sort of predictable and pedestrian, but still it would have been fascinating to see a follow-up episode about the consequences.

This is Sheila Gish's third Tales of the Unexpected appearance, and I only learned recently she passed away in 2005 I think. In fact, she was the aunt of Ewan "Moulin Rouge" McGregor.

Putting Jack back in his box

[nqure · 7/10 · 19 March 2024]

Another episode that hasn't featured on the loop of repeats on Sky Arts (UK), but is available online.

It's well-structured & moves at a brisk pace. There's a lot more going on beneath the apparent veneer of jovial bonhomie. Prankster George acts like an overgrown schoolboy, his immature antics tolerated by a loving wife, his attempts at humour made worse by his near constant, irritating refrain/catchphrase of 'Where's Your Sense of Humour?' when his victims don't quite appreciate the joke. It sounds even worse when his wife, Julie, occasionally joins in.

George's practical jokes begin to get under the skin of Frank, his friend & rival at work, & Frank's wife, Laura, as they try to avoid giving George the satisfaction of knowing that he's getting the better of them. I agree that the later scene where George crudely banters with a clearly uninterested Laura was good. We don't know if he is joking or not, which makes it an uncomfortable watch.

Without spoiling the plot too much, the initial scenes set up the premise of George as a prankster, but whose jokes take on a much more sinister edge as he sabotages Frank's opportunity at getting promoted at work, and wears Laura's patience. Another narrative strand suggests that George isn't in good health (his cough). The payoff involves Laura discovering a way of getting her own back on him, but just like George with his rather unfunny pranks, things go a bit too far.

I do agree with the review about the ending, but it works as a punchline to a story which is about irony, and a rather irritating character getting their comeuppance.

The episode is certainly engaging enough to occupy your attention for twenty five minutes, like, the relationship & interplay between the two couples . It's well-acted, particularly Sheila Gish as the long-suffering Laura & Philip Jackson (George), whose puckish sense of humour verges on the malicious.

Decent set-up let down by a lacklustre payoff

[overlydramaticpanda · 4/10 · 21 July 2023]

The story centres around two couples - George and Julie Forester, and Frank and Laura Parker. The couples are good friends with each other but the friendship is repeatedly strained by George's penchant for increasingly malicious practical jokes. While both Julie and Frank are more than happy to either laugh off George's antics (or at least not rise to them), Laura is openly frustrated and unamused, leading to a good deal of tension between the pair, especially when Julie asks Laura to keep an eye on George when she leaves for a weekend in Edinburgh.

The performances are probably the strongest thing in this episode, especially Philip Jackson as George as he manages to balance the initial impression of the man to be a fairly harmless trickster who just doesn't always know when to stop with the darker turn the character takes roughly halfway through the episode. Sheila Gish also does a good job of selling Laura's exasperation of George's antics - the scene where George effectively comes on to Laura is probably the best scene in the entire episode and is distinctly uncomfortable to watch. Even if you found George's "jokes" prior to this scene to be funny, it's hard to deny that there's a definite dark undertone to his behaviour that comes out in full force during that scene, though not to the point of having him descend into "moustache-twirling villain" territory.

To be honest, I'm convinced this episode might be counted among some of the best in this series if not for the distinctly unsatisfying nature of the resolution. Tales Of The Unexpected was no stranger to characters meeting unpleasant (and occasionally somewhat karmic) endings, but the circumstances that surround George's are frankly far too unceremonious and downright irrelevant to the story that was being told that it loses any sense of impact that it's going for. Contrary to most episode descriptions and what Frank and Laura themselves try to claim, the episode ends up being, not a case of "practical joker takes a joke too far and gets his comeuppance because of it", but more "unhealthy man happens to lock himself in a cellar". After all, he could have been down in that cellar doing quite literally anything and the result of him becoming locked inside would still have been exactly the same; that he was apparently trying to put the finishing touches on yet another cruel joke is entirely incidental. If, for example, Laura herself had deliberately fixed the doorknob to break, or if George had tried another prank on her and/or Frank and met his end as a direct result of that (say for once Laura didn't end up missing with her knife as she whirled around in shock at George sneaking up on her), the ending would have been a lot more satisfying because it would be actively paying off what the episode had been setting up - both Frank and Laura increasingly losing their patience with George, George's pranks increasing in their maliciousness, etc.

It's ultimately a shame because the episode does have a lot going for it; it's just unfortunate that it ends up, much like a failed practical joke, more frustrating than anything else in its lack of a decent payoff.

Where's your sense of humour?

[Sleepin_Dragon · 8/10 · 19 February 2016]

Laura Parker and Julie Forester are busy preparing an important dinner, Julie's husband is loitering behind the curtain, poised to jump out in a scary mask to terrify Laura. George is an utterly irritating man who always takes the joke too far, but one day he takes things too far.

A fairly good story and episode, made all the better by the presence and performance of Sheila Gish, Tom Chadbon and Philip Jackson. The weakest of Sheila's episodes, but still very good, her character is just a bit more bland then in the last 'A Harmless vanity.'

I think this is a wonderfully clever and complex episode, there is more going on then you first think, what seem to be a rather soft and jovial story is actually a lot darker and more sinister then you'd first think. There's a load of malice and spite. I enjoyed it.

8/10

Utterly dreadful

[bmesser · 2/10 · 17 December 2021]

This was another utterly dreadful episode of tales of the unexpected. Tales of the unexpected I should cocoa! Anything but, if George hadn't had a heart attack I would have gone back in time and clubbed him to death myself.