Hinge and Bracket

ian1968Tue 30/10/07 13:54

Found out today much to my delight that a DVD of their show has been released , I grew up watching them as a kid and always thought they were real women lol

This is from Gaydar Nations page.
If you're under the age of 30, it's likely you've never heard of Hinge and Bracket. Actually, scrap that. You've probably heard of them but only in passing parlance in the same way you hear us ageing Gen Xers rhapsodising nostalgically about Swap Shop and Space Hoppers.
So, for the uninitiated, here's a quick rewind: they were, in fact, a drag double act consisting of Dr Evadne Hinge and Dame Hilda Bracket, a pair of affected, ageing Englishwomen living an olde worlde existence in a Suffolk manse.

Theirs was an idealised bubble of tea and cucumber sandwiches, musical soirées, sweet sherry and cricket on the green as spinsters of the parish who enjoyed high-minded cultural pursuits of between-the-wars, middle-class laydeez.

With their reminiscences and songs the pair brought a unique brand of whimsical humour to British comedy.

Ok, I hear you. Doesn't exactly sound like Appointment Viewing, does it? But surprisingly Dear Ladies, their 1983 BBC series that's just been released on DVD for the first time, proves to be a pretty enjoyable watch. This is partly because the genteel setting is offset by some caustic, coruscating one-liners but mostly because the role of Hinge and Brackett are played with such game gusto.

Actually, they were less played than inhabited by co-creators and writers (alongside Gyles Brandreth) George Logan and Patrick Fyffe who were so immersed in the parts that they only ever gave interviews in character, long before Sacha Baron Cohen's Ali G and Borat method channelling.

Logan was the tall, stately Hinge and Fyffe the maniacally grinning, acerbic Bracket who, from initially debuting the duo at the 1974 Edinburgh Fringe, went on to hone their act through hefty stage tours, radio shows and eventually TV work.

Their years of experience and fine-tuning are much in evidence here as the pair revel in a mixture of mannered artifice, double entendre-laced badinage and musical interludes.

The series ably creates a Noël Coward bygone era of quick quips, withering putdowns and unashamed snobbery where the church fête becomes a fraught exercise in hierarchical social terrorism.

Admittedly, the series doesn't have the rat-tat-tat riffing we've grown used to in contemporary comedy, but when you think about it this was definitely subversion spiked for its time.

I mean, two blokes decked out in pearl necklaces and cocktail dresses, wearing their non-PCness with pride and living together like an old married couple to the point where you're not sure where the reality stops and the act begins - as a kid I thought they really were a couple of dodderingly eccentric old ladies!

That's pretty surreally out-there in the mould of a Dame Edna or a Lily Savage, whereby masking up as alternate personae allows you to be as saucy and acid-tongued as you like.

If Hinge and Bracket do have a comparable contemporary counterpart though it's Matt Lucas and David Walliams's Little Britain creation Emily Howard, inasmuch as they exist in the same caricatured, rarefied parallel universe of ladylike parasols and perfumed hankies that's ripe for an affectionate ribbing.

Gently and intelligently funny, Dear Ladies, despite its age, stands up remarkably well making for a nice gearshift change from the current crop of sitcoms littering the glass bucket that endlessly and hammily mug for LOL guffaws, shamelessly milking every gag and gurn for maximum mileage.

Dear Ladies is a quietly classy cult classic.