Clara’s Verdict
Some things should not work as well as they do. The Navy Lark — the BBC Radio comedy that ran from 1959 to 1977, featuring the perpetually hapless crew of HMS Troutbridge — should, by rights, be a curiosity: a period piece, technically compromised, culturally distant. Instead, listening to the first two series collected here at over twenty hours, I found myself laughing out loud on a Tuesday morning in a way that most contemporary comedy fails to produce. The timing is extraordinary. Jon Pertwee and Leslie Phillips were simply brilliant at this, and Ronnie Barker — in what amounts to an extended supporting role as the magnificently named Able Seaman Fatso Johnson — was already fully formed as a comedian. You can hear exactly where he would go.
This is archive comedy at its best: properly restored, genuinely funny, and a remarkable document of a Britain that no longer quite exists. The BBC has been right to bring it back into accessible form.
About the Audiobook
HMS Troutbridge is a Royal Navy frigate perpetually based on an unnamed island just off Portsmouth, staffed by a crew whose collective competence is precisely inverse to their collective confidence. Sub-Lieutenant Phillips (Leslie Phillips) is magnificently useless; Chief Petty Officer Pertwee (Jon Pertwee) is magnificently conniving, forever angling for personal advantage within a system he has spent years learning to subvert; Commander ‘Thunderguts’ Povey (Richard Caldicot) is in a state of permanent bewilderment at the gap between what the Royal Navy should be and what HMS Troutbridge actually is.
The formula never changes across forty-three episodes, and it never needs to. Each episode finds a new situation to filter through these fixed characters — a yacht regatta, a smuggling operation, a psychological test that does not go as planned — and the pleasure is in the combination of familiar roles and fresh complications. The scripts by Lawrie Wyman are tighter than most contemporary radio comedy manages, and the cast’s mastery of the material by the second series is remarkable to hear. The special episode, The Wrens’ Reunion, recorded at the Royal Festival Hall in 1960, is a genuine bonus.
The production note that « some of the language reflects the era in which it was first broadcast » is worth bearing in mind — the humour is overwhelmingly innocent, but the lexicon is unambiguously of its time. This is a feature rather than a bug.
The Narration
There is no separate narrator here — the cast performs directly, as originally broadcast. Leslie Phillips alone would justify the investment: his singular upper-class-silly voice, capable of conveying genuine alarm and total incomprehension simultaneously, has never been replicated and never will be. Pertwee is all scheming energy and barely concealed self-interest. Ronnie Barker, even in a supporting role, demonstrates the quality that would make him one of the great British comedians of his generation. The ensemble creates a complete world in audio that is utterly believable on its own terms.
What Readers Say
The collection holds a perfect 5.0-star rating from four UK listeners — a small sample, but eloquent. « Humor holds up well as nearly 60 years old, » notes one with admirable understatement. Another calls it « a good stress buster — will have you laughing from beginning to end. » A third describes the joy of « having the first series » available for the first time. The consensus across all reviews is consistent: the comedy travels across time without apology or compromise. For those who grew up with the series, this is simply « a joy. »
Who Should Listen?
Essential for anyone who loves classic British radio comedy — Round the Horne, Hancock’s Half Hour, I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again — and wants to understand where some of its finest performers came from and what they were doing before television found them. Also excellent for listeners who simply want something genuinely funny that requires nothing from them in return. At twenty hours, this is a magnificent companion for long drives, tedious commutes, or grey afternoons when the world needs to be made briefly, gloriously ridiculous.
Listen on Audible UK: Get The Navy Lark: Series 1 and 2 on Audible UK. Also available on Kobo, Scribd, and Storytel.
