Brothers in Law – 1957 | 94 mins | Comedy | B&W

Plot Synopsis

The Boulting Brothers Private’s Progress was followed by the gentle “greenhorn” comedy of Brothers in Law, again featuring Ian Carmichael as fledgling lawyer Roger Thursby.

Thursby’s uncle Sir Reginald Barrington-Thursby is well-known in the profession, and Roger is viewed by his parents as continuing the family tradition. Roger inevitably and literally stumbles from one mistake to another – ill-equipped in court and initially self-conscious with Sally Smith (Jill Adams), the film’s top floor-flat femme fatale, incompetent on the golf-course, and intimidated at every turn. This sentimentalised context – played out fully in the film’s final sequence in which Thursby’s parents and the village community turn out to watch him in a trial – does much to localise the effects of the humour. Roger is ultimately, and ironically, educated in the ways of law and strategic argument by seventeen-time offender Alfred Green (Terry-Thomas), who is angered when only charged with one count, rather than his customary twelve!