Those who praise modern comedies as 'dark' and 'original' tend to be shamefully ignorant of past achievements in the field. The 1973 B.B.C. series 'Black & Blue' was an anthology of plays intended to showcase offbeat humour. The first of these was 'Secrets' written by Michael Palin and Terry Jones, who won the assignment on the strength of their work on 'Monty Python's Flying Circus'.
This satire on the consumer industry starred Warren Mitchell as 'Cyril Rose', the owner of the 'Secrets' chocolate factory. A crisis develops when three men fall into the mixing vat, winding up as part of the filling for the latest batch. Despite Rose's best efforts to stop the contaminated chocks going on sale, a small section of the population are unknowingly turned into cannibals.
It looks like the end for 'Secrets', until...market research shows that customers preferred the chocks with the dead workmen in to the existing brand. Sales go through the roof.
Bowing to demand, Rose tries to replicate the effect by putting dead animal carcases into the chocks, but the public are not so keen on those.
Reluctantly, Rose does a deal with a local mortuary who then supply him with fresh human corpses. He makes no secret ( ahem! ) of the fact that his chocks contain 'human meat'. In fact he is soon paying people to volunteer to become part of the process, which they are more than willing to do as it has now become a prestigious way to die.
As can be gleaned from the above outline, this ghoulish play has more than a touch of Python about it; in particular, the 'Crunchy Frog' sketch from the first series, and the notorious 'Undertaker' skit from the final instalment of Series 2.
Warren Mitchell is excellent in a role very different to Alf Garnett ( 'Till Death Us Do Part' was still in production at that time ), while Clifford Rose's character seems to be a dry run for his later 'Kessler' in the wartime drama 'Secret Army'.
I was only eleven when 'Secrets' was transmitted and even then, I was shocked. I was not alone. The B.B.C. switchboard was jammed by numerous calls of complaint. When it came out on D.V.D. thirty years later as part of 'The Complete Ripping Yarns', I was amazed at how well it stood up.
The play posed an intriguing ( and still relevant ) ethical dilemma; if a demand for food containing human matter suddenly appeared, would it be met? Palin and Jones conclude, rather gloomily, that it would.
In 1988, 'Secrets' formed the basis for a less than wonderful film called 'Consuming Passions' starring Tyler Butterworth and Vanessa Redgrave. The scriptwriters padded out the story with so many irrelevant sub-plots the original message was lost.
Fortunately, the original is with us once again and we can see just how far ahead of their time Palin and Jones were. We may not have reached the stage where dead people are used in the manufacturing of confectionery, but one increasingly feels something similar might one day happen, justified by some idiot with a fat expense account claiming 'we're only giving the public what it wants'.
So, settle down in front of the box with a stiff drink and watch 'Secrets' - a black comedy that manages to be both black and very funny. One word of warning though - don't eat chocolates beforehand.
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