The Company of Five (TV Series) Shaggy Dog (1968) User Reviews

early Dennis Potter with a killer punchline

[didi-5 · 8/10 · 1 September 2008]

'The Shaggy Dog' is an early Dennis Potter TV play which first aired as part of the series 'Company of Five' in 1968. Its main part, Mr Wilkie the job applicant, is played by stage actor John Neville (perhaps best known for playing Baron Munchausen for Terry Gilliam twenty years later). At first it looks as if we have a straightforward story of an HR man (Cyril Luckham), an applicant, and a management consultant (Derek Godfrey), but it quickly transpires that things are not as they appear.

The quality of this film is definitely on the low side but the performances and the script are still sharp, and the punchline, although heavily telegraphed in retrospect, was a bit of a surprise. Whether this play is simply a chiller, a black comedy, a drama, or a bit of all, Neville's weird and slightly pervy/unhinged Wilkie will keep your interest.

This used to be quite a rarie

[hte-trasme · 8/10 · 23 November 2009]

A shaggy dog story is a long, rambling narrative in the form of a joke which leads to an irrelevant or intentionally unfunny punchline. While it resembles a joke, it is not meant, like most jokes, to amuse the listener. The point of a shaggy dog story is to amuse the teller -- so that the teller can observe the listener's responses to the aimless narrative and its thud of a conclusion.

In this relatively early play by the great Dennis Potter, a corporation has brought in a management consultant to sit in on a job interview. He's not to be polite, not to treat the candidate with politeness or respect, but effectively to to give him a shaggy dog story of incoherent stimuli and analyze his reactions to determine his suitability. The candidate, however, a Mr Wilkie, has other ideas. His motive are mysterious, but he seems fixed on concepts anathema to the dogmatic modernism of the management consultant's philosophy.

Mr Wilkie turns the tables. In a manner of speaking -- and then literally -- he tells his interviewers a shaggy dog story. He seems to see his position at the mercy of the powerful and merciless corporation as analogous to that of the gentle rarie in a famous shaggy dog story. The duel of wills between them and the mystery of Mr Wilkie's intentions are highly tense and engrossing. This was made in the day when fifty minutes of television could and would be absolutely riveting and consist of just a few people in a room talking.

At once, it is also an excellent satire and condemnation of the still-pervasive corporate philosophy of the vacant, vacuous, and obnoxious management consultant. The performances here, while a little eccentric (which indeed is i the spirit of the piece) are very good -- whether they are good enough to justify a series in which they all starred as different characters in each week's play (as was apparently the premise of "The Company of Five").

"Shaggy Dog" may not be the most substantial or most touching of Potter's plays, but it is substantial and it is touching -- the more impressive for being essentially an Absurdist piece and a kind of shaggy dog story in itself. Most of all it is extremely compelling viewing.

All recordings were thought to have been destroyed of this play for many years as a consequence of its producer's archiving policy at the time (it was not considered to have any more commercial applications, and tape and space were valuable), but a copy was found, mislabeled, in 2005. My thanks for the diligence of those who recovered it!