The Treat: Richard Gadd

0:00Richard Gadd:Welcome to The Treat. I'm Elvis Mitchell. Writer-actor Richard Gadd has a unique ability to put larger-than-life characters under the microscope, as we've seen in his Emmy-winning Netflix series Baby Reindeer and his newest, the Emmy-nominated Half-Man, on HBO. For The Treat, Gadd looks at a comedy team whose physical comedy was underpinned by an epic emotional power. Hi, I'm Richard Gadd, and this is The Treat.

0:33I'd like to talk about Laurel and Hardy.

0:41Probably my earliest memory, I think, is watching The Music Box, which is basically the story of them trying to get a piano up the stairs, but it's absolutely magnificent in the way that it's done. The kind of escapades they get in on the way up with people passing, it keeps falling down all the way to the bottom of the stairs, it's brilliantly shot, it's brilliantly performed. Heave! Heave! Heave! Heave! Heave! Heave! Heave! Heave! Heave! Heave! I think Loral and Hardy are not only just excellent clowns and writers, but they're fantastic actors. I mean, I think about when Stan would get emotional, he'd get quite whiny.

1:25It's just so well done. And the kind of pomposity of Oliver Hardy, it's just, it's magnificent performances that I think deserve all the praise and deserve the fact that they're etched in the canons of time.

1:46Get out of here! Get that piano out of that box! I remember watching Way Out West when I was younger and learning the dance that they did together in that film.

2:12I just think it's a terrifically plotted, brilliant film, and I think it is. It's probably their most famous, and I mean, Music Box Hall's the most special place in my heart because that's the one that would make me laugh the most. my mum would sit on the stairs and just listen to me hysterically laughing all the way throughout the film. But The Way Out West is always the one that I'd recommend because of its plotting and the brilliant performing and just all the stuff that goes on throughout it. It's a magnificent film. Eat the hat. I won't do it. If you don't eat that hat, I'll tie you to a tree and let the buzzards get you.

2:50Would you really do that? I certainly will. Eat it.

3:04They sort of like can't stand each other but can't live without each other and they can be really harsh to one another and physical at times but it's magnificent at the same time. I get kind of emotional thinking about it because of how rap-topping kind of... kind of beautiful nostalgia it is, you know? In the blue ridge mountains of Virginia On the trail of the lonesome pine In the pale moonshine Our hearts entwine Where she carved her name And I carved mine Or June, or June

3:46Richard Gadd:Emmy-winning actor-writer Richard Gadd on the enduring power of Laurel and Hardy. The Treat is produced by Rebecca Mooney and mixed by Katie Gilchrist. We endure here at The Treat. I'm Elvis Mitchell. The Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia On the trail of the lonesome pine In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia On the trail of the lonesome pine In the pale moonshine, our hearts entwined Where she carved her name and I carved mine Oh, June, like the mountains I'm blue Like the pine, I am lonesome for you

4:39In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia On the trail of the lonesome pond