No Sex Please, We're British is a 1973 British comedy film directed by Cliff Owen and starring Ronnie Corbett, Ian Ogilvy, Susan Penhaligon and Arthur Lowe.[1] It was written by Brian Cooke amd Johnnie Mortimer based on the 1971 play No Sex Please, We're British by Alistair Foot and Anthony Marriott, with multiple changes in the film adaptation.
Runnicles, a clerk in a small-town British bank (openly depicted in the film as the branch of Barclays Bank in Windsor High Street), is horrified when a package arrives containing pornography, rather than the new calculator he expected. His efforts to dispose of it, while avoiding detection, turn into a farcical series of events involving a bank inspector, the police, and a local criminal to whom the pornography actually belongs.
In The Monthly Film Bulletin John Gillett wrote: "Cliff Owen directs at a frenetic pace throughout, with everyone charging through doors and shouting madly. He occasionally mines some genuine comedy from the sheer pile-up of incident; but the material finally defeats him, and even the climactic car chase turns out a very flat set-piece. The actors do their British best to keep the laughs coming, with Ronnie Corbett working hard in his characteristic stuttering style, while Arthur Lowe turns in a neat and unexaggerated portrait of the glowering bank manager and Michael Bates provides a sharp cameo as a much put-upon bank inspector. "[2]
Writing in 1979, at the time of the American release, The New York Times reviewer commented: "In its own way, it is well done ... (with) its simple-minded and by now rather outdated double and triple entendres."[3]
In The Radio Times Guide to Films Tony Sloman gave the film 2/5 stars, writing: "One of the West End's longest running comic farces arrived on the screen virtually intact, but with a significantly different leading man. Whereas Michael Crawford had consolidated both career and image by instigating the gawky, inadvertent gauche lead on stage, in the film the role went to the diminutive British comedian Ronnie Corbett. Corbett does well by the hackneyed plot, and underrated director Cliff Owen keeps up the pace."[4]
TV Guide said: "A pleasing performance from Corbett ... saves this otherwise average British farce from the usual doldrums."[5]