Maureen Pryor

The British National Health System is skewered in this comedy set in a rundown London hospital. The hospital is filled with wacky staff members and patients, and the film strives to get all it can from their humorous escapades. The movie also includes a satire-within-a-satire, with "Nurse Norton's Affair" providing a send-up of TV hospital soap operas.

Creative passion, sexual desire and astounding excess dominate director Ken Russell's controversial biopic, which follows flamboyant composer Tchaikovsky (Richard Chamberlain) through his marriage to nymphomaniac Nina (Glenda Jackson) and his love affair with a count (Christopher Gable). The score features the London Symphony Orchestra under conductor André Previn performing several of Tchaikovsky's works.

Back for more hilarious misadventures, Dr. Simon Sparrow (Dirk Bogarde) endures a wacky series of internships in search of his medical calling. But when he decides to try his hand at surgery, standing in his way is formidable chief surgeon Sir Lancelot Spratt (James Robertson Justice). Sparrow's chance of getting on staff at the esteemed hospital is nil after he unwittingly insults Spratt. But with Sparrow, things have a funny way of working out.

Dr Simon Sparrow (Dirk Bogarde) is a fully fledged doctor in a casualty department. However he longs for some excitement, which he gets when he is rude to an important patient and is given his marching orders. He finds himself another job but as usual receives much unwanted female attention and still longs to be a surgeon. Via the usual hilarious mishaps and mistakes, can he succeed or is he destined to remain more popular with the opposite sex than his superiors? With Muriel Pavlov, James Robertson-Justice and Donald Sinden.