Weekend Viewing: Hancock On Jury Duty

I always liked this episode of Hancock’s Half-Hour  because it’s one of the best takes on a very standard TV plot: the Twelve Angry Men story where the lead character has jury duty, and is the only one who believes the defendant is not guilty. It was written (by the great Ray Galton and Alan Simpson) not long after the real Twelve Angry Men was done, and is a fu parody as well as a good Hancock episode.

Also, since I was talking about TV shows where the lead character is an idiot who never gets his comeuppance, Tony Hancock is a bit of an early prototype for that. Everybody except Sid James is living in a normal universe, under normal rules, and they’re aware that Hancock is an obnoxious doofus (unlike The Simpsons or something like that, where you have to be Frank Grimes to realize how stupid Homer really is), but he’s totally oblivious of his own problems, and he is constantly convinced that he’s a smart, good and patient man.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three