Made in 1960, Carry On Constable is one of the earliest Carry On comic romps, arriving before they’d carved out their bawdy niche in British cinema. In fact, this GeraldThomasdirected effort isn’t dissimilar to most of the mainstream Britcom of its era. A flu epidemic has forced a police station to take on a brace of callow recruits: Kenneth Connor, a superstitious bag of nerves Leslie Phillips, playing his usual rapscallion self the ludicrously effete Charles Hawtrey and Kenneth Williams. The “plot” is a sequence of thoroughly creaky gags at the expense of this bumbling quartet. The staple characters hadn’t settled into their “classic” personae yet. Here, Sid James is an exasperated sergeant, not the sort of crinkly rogue he played in later years, Kenneth Williams is dry, detached and supercilious, while Hattie Jacques is no matron but a sympathetic sergeant, whose every walkon is not yet accompanied by the portly strains of tubas and bassoons. The comedy here is, frankly, dismal–banana skins are slipped upon and officers’ legs urinated upon bydogs, all to a rueful soundtrack of wahwah trumpets. The main appeal of this movie is as a period slice of damp, preBeatles London in glorious black and white.