Rutland Times – Neil Innes

The Beatles had Hamburg, the Rutles had Rutland -- Rutland Weekend Television to be precise, the spring 1976 BBC TV series in which former Bonzo Dog Band Neil Innes and Monty Python's Eric Idle first aired the fascination that would shake the world. The pre-Fab Four appear only once in the RWT chronicles, reuniting "for tax purposes" to perform "I Must Be in Love (Is All You Need, Apart from Money Which Can't Buy Everything)," but the aftershocks of that performance can still be felt. Rutland Times is the soundtrack to the TV series, a 21-track masterpiece that really is as funny as it ought to be. An effortless parody of the last decade or so of British television's most treasured conceits, it takes the form of a full broadcast day, from the opening overture by the Rutland Light Orchestra, to the close down message from the Two Nobbies. In between times, the rock institution The Old Gay Whistle Test, children's TV flagship Wash with Mother, sports (the Foul of the Month competition) and television itself (Boring) are all highlighted via Innes' uncanny knack of sounding precisely like what he puts his mind to. But the highlight has to be "another in the series of Classically Bad American Films," 24 Hours in Tunbridge Wells, which not only sounds precisely like an outtake by Rodgers & Hart, it will probably send you off in search of more of the same. Hamstrung just a little by its distinctly British demeanor (with the most Anglophiliac will in the world, few folk who haven't lived there will quite understand why Nicholas Parsons raises such guffaws), Rutland Times stands among the highest of all high points in Neil Innes' lengthy career. And Eric Idle's pretty funny as well. ~ Dave Thompson, All Music Guide