The medical profession was a favourite theme for lampooning by the Carry On team. In 1959, the second film in the series had been Carry on Nurse, with Carry on Doctor following in 1967 and Carry on Matron in 1972. 1969’s Carry on Again Doctor wasn’t as the title might suggest, a direct sequel to Carry on Doctor (there was never that kind of continuity between films in the series) and while it might be the least of the medical-themed Carry Ons, it still has plenty of all the ingredients that we’ve come to know and love.

It would be the last Carry On that Jim Dale would appear in until he was lured back for the hugely ill-advised Carry on Columbus in 1992 and fittingly, he’s given the lion’s share of screen time. He stars as the accident-prone Jimmy Nookey, a doctor at the Long Hampton Hospital under the management of Dr Frederick Carver (Kenneth Williams). His mishaps make him an enemy in the shape of Dr Stoppidge (Charles Hawtrey) but his luck seems to be changing when new patient, film star Goldie Locks (Barbara Windsor), arrives for treatment clad in an eye-wateringly skimpy bikini. Though they start a relationship, a series of further accidents leads Goldie to flee for Rome and Nookey is dispatched to a remote Pacific island (actually sound stages at Pinewood Studios) to help run a medical mission for wealthy patient Ellen Moore (Joan Sims). There he meets Gladstone Screwer (Sid James) – surely the greatest of all Carry on character names – a local doctor more interested in booze than surgery, though he has used local ingredients to create a serum that offers instant and permanent weight loss. Returning to England, Nookey goes into business with Mrs Moore and Matron (Hattie Jacques, surely British cinema’s greatest nurse), angering Carver and Stoppidge who set out to steal the secret to the magic formula.

Jokily subtitled “or Where There’s a Pill There’s a Way or The Bowels Are Ringing or If You Say It’s Your Thermometer I’ll Have to Believe You, But It’s a Funny Place to Put It,” Carry on Again Doctor has a more cohesive storyline than some of its predecessors like Carry on Camping (1969), which had just been a series of often very funny skits based loosely on a shared theme. This one even has that rarest of commodities for a Carry On film, some actual character development, Nookey’s journey from accident-prone doctor to washed-up alcoholic on a tropical island to successful businessman forming the core of the narrative. Dale rises to the occasion admirably, and gives one of his best performances in the series, famously injuring his back in his zeal to perform as many of his own stunts as possible (the runaway hospital gurney was the source of his injury).

Elsewhere, Sims gets a more likable character than usual, Windsor gets possibly her second most iconic Carry On moment (after that bikini scene in Camping) when she first arrives in the hospital sporting a bikini made of little more than a couple of tiny bits of material and some string, Williams is at his supercilious best and Patsy Rowlands make the first of her many appearances in the series. It probably doesn’t need saying that James is outstanding. His double act with Dale is particularly enjoyable and it’s a shame that they didn’t do more of the same. Their scenes together on the island, contrasting Dale’s uptight Nookey with James more laid-back and conniving Screwer are where the film really comes to live and is at its most fun. One of Screwer’s wives, the newly thinned-out Scrubba, is played by former Miss Guyana and future Mrs Michael Caine, Shakira Baksh.

Carry on Again Doctor may not be the best of the medical Carry Ons but the story rattles along at a decent canter and while overall it’s one of the more fair-to-middling films in the series, it has more than its fair share of decent gags (Screwer getting the football results from jungle drums is particularly good). The instant slimming formula (later subverted into a sex-change serum) provides the film with a comedic fantasy element and the film was a hit with the public, though in retrospect it mark the beginning of a change in the series fortunes. There were still some great moments to come but with the departure of Dale, the series started going off the boil. As the series moved into the 70s and other cast members started drifting off, the films started going over old ground. The good jokes were still marvellous but they’d start becoming thinner on the ground. The very fact that the team felt the need to go back to a milieu that they’d already explored twice before suggested that they were starting to run out of ideas.