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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 251384" data-attributes="member: 23"> Wood & Walters: Two Creatures Great And Small (1st January 1981) <img src="https://ladydontfallbackwards.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/cover062.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />According to the spoken introductions, the Pilot's alternative subtitle was Wood Is Thicker Than Walters. Apparently  the fat joke subtitles were dropped for the series proper as Vic was understandably fed up with the comments she was getting about her size in the press (was she even that heavy at this point? She doesn't look it to me).Anyway, as a thirty minute interlude between two more serious films, this Pilot episode is a mildly enjoyable stop. Despite the very different tone, there is at least some commonality in the women having their Nearly A Happy Ending hairdos. These two actress-comediennes are value for money in anything. But that’s kind of the problem. Most of sketches do feel like just anything. Some don’t seem to go anywhere, and even in the ones that do the payoff or punchlines feel like damp squibs. Like the couple who are having marriage guidance in order to ask about the curtain track. Some of the better lines come in an early sketch with Victoria and Robert Longden as a couple on a blind date in a restaurant:There’s a venture into some kind of surreal alternative comedy with the sketch about the woman asking the rude hairstylist for red streaks and getting stabbed on the top of the head with scissors until she bleeds. It’s the kind of thing that might have been hilarious if Victoria had described it in one of her monologues but actually seeing it just ends up feeling silly and dull. It might have worked for Kenny Everett or someone, but it's didn't fly for me with Wood and Walters. There’s Dotty’s Slot, of course, which gave the opportunity for many Woodisms about woks and whatnot. But even that didn’t raise as many smiles as it could have done and was really more about the song at the end of the sketch. Which leads me on to the point: really, the sketches felt very much like filler in between the songs, which I suppose is the opposite of most show so this kind. It’s almost like the sketches were the equivalent of the bad banter a cabaret singer does in between songs. There are no less than four musical numbers in the space of twenty five minutes. All good in their own way. The two duets between Vic and Julie in particular - the first and third songs respectively - were great. Both felt of the tone and quality of the two films that preceded this Pilot. The less than glowing way I view this episode is no doubt coloured by knowing the kind of quality that Victoria’s series would reach with As Seen On TV a few years later. Or at least, that’s how I remember it. Perhaps I’m in for disappointment there as well.</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?