The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It (1977)

Joseph McGrath’s television film The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It (1977), first broadcast on ITV on 18 September 1977, came with an impressive pedigree. Director Joseph McGrath had worked with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore on Not Only… But Also (1965-1970) and The Beatles on a series of promotional shorts before going on to direct hit-and-miss big screen comedies like the Peter Sellers’ scenes in Casino Royale (1967), The Magic Christian (1969), Digby: The Biggest Dog in the World (1973), The Great McGonagall (1975), I’m Not Feeling Myself Tonight (1976) and the big screen version of the popular ITV sitcom Rising Damp (1980). The script was polished by former Python John Cleese who also headed a fantastic cast of familiar faces and producer Humphrey Barclay has been responsible for a good many popular – and some very unpopular – examples of small screen British comedy. So one might have the right to expect The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It to be an awful lot funnier than it actually turns out to be.

The assassination of US diplomat Dr Gropinger (Ron Moody in a very funny cameo) and the delivery of a threatening letter signed “Moriarty” to the US President (Joss Ackland) triggers an international crisis that could spell the eponymous end of civilisation as we know it. A specially convened committee meets in London to discuss the situation and decide to approach Arthur Sherlock Holmes (John Cleese), the grandson of the famous detective. The Holmes genes have been rather diluted though and Holmes is an eccentric drug addict assisted by Dr William Watson, a bungling – and partly bionic – sidekick who still seems to be living in the Victorian era. Their investigations uncover Moriarty’s identity but only after a host of famous detectives have been murdered along the way.

Cleese is very funny, still channelling a touch of the Basil Fawltys, as is Connie Booth as a very odd Mrs Hudson, but the show is comprehensively stolen by Arthur Lowe as the idiotic Watson, a man so monumentally dim-witted that he makes Nigel Bruce’s contentious portrayal of the good doctor look like an intellectual giant. The supporting cast is impressive but are let down by a script that’s nowhere funny as it should be ad is all too often prone to lazy racism – the African delegate (Christopher Asante) who refers to his white colleagues as “bwana” for example or, inevitably, Burt Kwouk as a Little Red Book toting Chinese delegate.

The pacing is also a hindrance, the plot dragging when it should be sprinting (Joss Ackland’s extended cameo as a Gerald Ford-inspired president goes on for far too long and wasn’t all that funny to start with) and limping from one set-piece to another with often very lame gags that all too often fail to land. It’s all a bit half-baked really and Cleese and, particularly, Lowe deserve better. There are one or two laugh-out-loud moments but not enough to satisfactorily fill 55 minutes and the plot fizzles out long before we get to the climactic unmasking of Moriarty. We never get any real sense of Moriarty’s grand plan, all of which seems to unfold in a few glum hotel corridors in London – there’s no sense that this “end of civilisation situation” is actually anything more than a personal grudge being nursed by Moriarty’s descendant against the Holmes family.

Holmes’ list of previous adventures “The unexpected but accurate bisecting of the Belgian foreign minister, the Royal College of Needlework massacre, the strange affair of the seven boiled bishops, and the man-eating poodles of Lambeth Palace enigma” – all sound rather more enticing than the well-intentioned but misfiring film we actually got. A few decent gags and some good performances don’t make up for the bad jokes and lack of a decent plot. Like Watson, its heart is in the right place but its brain is all too often disengaged.