"The 1970s sex comedy was a peculiarly British institution, fuelled by a mix of Victorian prudishness and the bawdy, end-of-pier tradition" that would also manifest itself in "The Benny Hill Show" and the "Carry On..." films, said Ed Power in The Irish Times.
As we learn in the two-part Channel 4 documentary "Saucy! Secrets of the British Sex Comedy", these low-budget flicks had huge popular appeal in their day. For instance, "Adventures of a Taxi Driver" – "a blizzard of bare bums and knob gags" – apparently made more at the UK box office in 1976 than Scorsese's "Taxi Driver". This documentary doesn't really examine why this might have been the case, but it is enlightening and should entertain those who "find other people's wobbly bits innately hilarious".
"The documentary is as gregarious and cheeky as the subject matter demands", but it is not vacuous, and it allows those involved in making the films to give their take on the genre, said Rebecca Nicholson in The Guardian. Among the big questions addressed is whether the actresses were exploited – and the picture is mixed. Some say they were willing if not eager participants; others paint "a grimly familiar picture of casting couches and jobs for 'favours'".
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I'd have liked a "deeper exploration of why the British in particular are (as one contributor put it) 'obsessed with giggling about sex'", said Gerard Gilbert in The i Paper. Still, the documentary packs in a lot of information about "a largely (and some would say, rightly) forgotten slice of cinematic history".
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