Videovista have my review of Duncan Wood’s The Bargee.

Given that the film stars Harry H. Corbett, Ronnie Barker and Eric Sykes you might expect this to be a knock-about 1960s British comedy and, to a certain extent, it is.  However, the writers of the film were Ray Galton and Alan Simpson who made their name with Steptoe and Son, a sitcom best remembered for its social realism and its confrontation of the British class system.  The Bargee is very much a film in this tradition as beneath the rather lightweight comedy lurks a drama about the final working months of the British canal network and the culture of canal workers and lock keepers that depended upon it.  Ultimately flawed, the film is still a fascinating look at a now extinct culture.