Carry On Kitchen Sink: the early Carry Ons as realist drama

In British Cinema; A Very Short Introduction (2022), Charles Barr identifies three new forces that came into the national cinema in the mid-to-late ‘fifties; the Hammer horrors, starting with The Quatermass Xperiment in 1955, the ‘new wave’ of realist drama that was launched by the first night of Look Back of Anger in 1956, and the Carry Ons, beginning with Carry On Sergeant in 1958.

It's my contention that these three new forces have more in common than most critics have acknowledged, and that all three should be considered as reactions to the changing social forces of the postwar era, and the increased prominence of working class voices.

Carry On Sergeant is especially significant in this respect – its structure is predictive of Arnold Wesker’s 1962 play Chips With Everything, even down to including a reluctant officer among the squaddies. The cast, as well as making references back to wartime cinema (William Hartnell), and Ealing Comedy (Charles Hawtrey), features Dora Bryan, who in 1961 would appear in A Taste of Honey, one of the defining plays of the ‘kitchen sink’ movement.

My paper will argue that the early Carry Ons, those written by Norman Hudis, and the first four in particular, should be considered as a subgenre within the series, creating a form of film comedy based in (relative) social realism.