Tracing Absurdist Comedy: The Bed Sitting Room, Monty Python, and Beckett

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Based on a play by Spike Milligan and John Antrobus, The Bed Sitting Room has often been cited as the center of some kind of comedic Venn diagram between The Goon Show and Monty Python's Flying Circus. A story about a post-apocalyptic Britain in which Ralph Richardson's fusty old lord slowly mutates into the bed sitting room of the title. Is its missing link claim between Milligan's 1950s radio series and the Oxbridge Pythons of the late 1960s truly justified? Or is there another comparison to be made? For me personally, there's a bleak absurdity to The Bed Sitting Room that puts me in mind of Beckett. Yes, this film is funny, helped of course by a roll call of British humorists that include Milligan himself, his fellow Goon Harry Secombe, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Marty Feldman, and Jimmy Edwards. But there's also an innate tragedy to the piece as befits the setting of its post-nuclear holocaust dystopia.

[00:00:53]It's a view shared by its director Richard Lester, who once said, "It's a sad film even though I didn't feel sad at the play. I hope though that it'll be as funny as the original as well.

[00:01:03]But the more surreal it is, the more bizarre the images, the more serious and dedicated I think we have to be to not go for an easy gag. And being so busy keeping those away, I'm not able to tell whether it's funny anymore." I think Lester is being modest here. The reality is he's treading the same fine line between absurdist comedy and tragedy mixed with a justifiable anger as he did with 1967's How I Won the War.

[00:01:29]There are moments here that I find deeply saddening and emotionally affecting, such as the moment that the old married couple played by Arthur Lowe and Mona Washbourne, surely the forerunners to the old couple in Raymond Briggs's When the Wind Blows, find themselves separated from the tube train they have called home since the bomb dropped.

[00:01:47]Look at how those actors play the fear and anguish of being separated.

[00:01:51]It's drama rather than comedy.

[00:01:53]I think that's absolutely the right tone to take.

[00:01:57]There ought to be drama and anger in a film about how the powers that be plunged us into a nuclear war that has left almost total devastation.

[00:02:05]The fact that Lester calls upon what you could call proper actors, including his regular rep company of Michael Hordern and Roy Kinnear, as well as some of the biggest comedians of the day, speaks to these intentions.

[00:02:17]It's important to remember that though Lowe is arguably best known for the role in evergreen sitcom Dad's Army, he was a proper actor. Likewise, Mona Washbourne is so affecting as the mother with a gentility and frailty that reminds us of our own dear old mums.

[00:02:33]You want the best for these characters, though Milligan's absurdist take on the nuclear holocaust is not going to provide it.

[00:02:40]Ultimately, The Bed Sitting Room takes its dystopic premise as a means to satirize the country and its traditions as a whole.

[00:02:47]The term nuclear war is never used. The BBC, as represented by Frank Thornton, prefer the euphemistic and oh-so-polite term of nuclear misunderstanding or unfortunate incident.

[00:02:59]As well as the BBC, several of our other institutions also survive here. The GPO is represented by Milligan himself, wandering aimlessly to deliver parcels.

[00:03:10]Marty Feldman serves as the NHS, clad in women's nurse's uniform, and determined to certify the death of Mona Washbourne, even though she's clearly still very much alive.

[00:03:21]Henry Woolf represents what remains of the electricity board, single-handedly pedaling a bicycle power generator.

[00:03:27]And then there's the police, as portrayed by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, patrolling the skies in a hot air balloon powered by Renta Car squad car, urging everyone to keep moving.

[00:03:39]Keep calm and carry on, indeed.

[00:03:43]Lastly, there's the highest offices of the land. The role of Prime Minister ultimately falls to Arthur Lowe's father, based purely on his inside the measurement.

[00:03:51]Whilst what remains of the royal family is traced to a Mrs. Ethel Shroat of High Street, Leytonstone, played by Dandy Nichols.

[00:04:00]Milligan takes pot shots at the class system, suggesting that even in the apocalypse, there's still a hierarchy to be had and traditions to conform to in what remains of Great Britain.

[00:04:09]If there's a future to be found here among the ruins, then it's left to Rita Tushingham and Richard Warwick as our two young lovers.

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