The best Joan Hickson’s comedy movies

An uncompromising British school headmaster finds himself beset by one thing going wrong after another.

An impoverished American sailor is fortunate enough to be passing the house of two rich gentlemen who have conceived the crazy idea of distributing a note worth one million pounds. The sailor finds that whenever he tries to use the note to buy something, people treat him like a king and let him have whatever he likes for free. Ultimately, the money proves to be more troublesome than it is worth when it almost costs him his dignity and the woman he loves.

With a flu epidemic running rife, three new bumbling recruits are assigned to Inspector Mills police station. With help from Special Constable Gorse, they manage to totally wreck the operations of the police force and let plenty of criminals get away, even before they arrive at the station. They all have to prove themselves or else they'll be out of a job and Sergeant Wilkins will be transferred. Sub-plots include romances between Wilkins and Moon, Constable and Passworthy.

A Shakespearean actor takes poetic revenge on the critics who denied him recognition.

Miss Marple believes she's seen a murder in a passing-by train, yet when the police find no evidence she decides to investigate it on her own.

A classic Ealing comedy in which a young boy steals a magnet and becomes a hero.

Escaping from China with a microfilm of the formula for the mysterious "Lotus X", Lord Southmere, a Queen's Messenger, is chased by a group of Chinese spies.

A charming and ambitious young man finds many ways to raise himself through the ranks in business and social standing - some honest, some not quite so. If he can just manage to avoid a certain very predatory woman...

The WW II romance set in Grosvenor square aka Eisenhower's home where the GIs stayed in London. Neagle loves Harrison. There arrives patriot GI Dean Jagger to rouse things up in the square. Snotty British Neagle and Jagger clash and fall for each other. What will Harrison have to say or do about these? What will the consequences be? Will the three finally become two and which two in this extremely patriotic love and war story.

A wealthy young man (Gregson) from Yorkshire visits a London nightclub and meets a performer (Dors). She decides to take him for every penny he is worth, and he decides to let her.

A former burglar trying to go straight joins a rehabilitation scheme using much the same methods as AA. Through the process, he takes work as a department store Santa, where the endless parade of goods and money, not to mention the pretty young shop hands have him like a moth to a flame in no time flat.

A naive but caring prison chaplain, who happens to have the same last name as an upper class cleric, is by mistake appointed as vicar to a small and prosperous country town. His belief in charity and forgiveness sets him at odds with the conservative and narrow-minded locals, and he soon creates social ructions by appointing a black dustman as his churchwarden, taking in a gypsy family, and persuading the local landowner to provide free food for the church to distribute free to the people of the town. When the congregation leaders realise the mistake and call for the Church of England to remove him, this turns out to be a very, very difficult issue - until one clergyman realises that a British project to send a man into space is in need of an astronaut...

The orderly suburban life of a 1950's English town is turned on its head when the teenaged daughter of one of the residents writes a steamy bestseller featuring characters obviously based on the local population.

Remake of the original Alfred Hitchcock movie with a more light-hearted tone and Kenneth More as the lead character.

The Wedded Bliss computer dating agency aims to bring together the lonely hearts of Much-Snoggin-in-the-Green. Its owner, Sidney Bliss, has enough complications in his own love life, but still produces a pamphlet called "The Wit to Woo". The strange collection of hopefuls lead to some outlandish matches, and jealousies are bound to lead to trouble

On marrying the boss's daughter, Richard takes his father-in-law's advice to hire a live-in domestic. He soon finds good help is hard to come by. Run-ins follow with dipsomaniacs, bank robbers, a Welsh lass who takes one look at London and runs, and an Italian charmer who turns the place into a bawdy house. Then when Ingrid arrives from Sweden things actually start to get complicated.

The first of the seven "Doctor" films, based on Richard Gordon's novels and released between 1954 and 1970. Simon Sparrow is a newly arrived medical student at St Swithin's hospital in London. Falling in with three longer-serving hopefuls he is soon immersed in the wooing, imbibing and fast sports-car driving that constitute 1950s medical training. There is, however, always the looming and formidable figure of chief surgeon Sir Lancelot Spratt to remind them of their real purpose.

Local councillor Sidney Fiddler persuades the Mayor to help improve the image of their rundown seaside town by holding a beauty contest. But formidable Councillor Prodworthy, head of the local women's liberation movement, has other ideas. It's open warfare as the women's lib attempt to sabotage the contest.

Set in Haven Hospital where a certain men's ward is causing more havoc than the whole hospital put together. The formidable Matron's debut gives the patients a chill every time she walks past, with only Reckitt standing up to her. There's a colonel who is a constant nuisance, a bumbling nurse, a romance between Ted York and Nurse Denton, and Bell who wants his bunion removed straight away, so after drinking alcohol, the men decide to remove the bunion themselves!