Otley (film)

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Otley is a 1968 comedy thriller film in which the eponymous Gerald Arthur Otley, a hapless and light-fingered antiques dealer played by Tom Courtenay, is mistaken for a spy and grows into the part - to such an extent that the real spy played by Romy Schneider falls for him. The action - one hesitates to say plot - romps from one stereotypical English situation to another: Rolls Royces are driven, tea is drunk, and bacon sandwiches are fried and thrown to the dogs.

The locations and situations are a catalogue of England in the 60s and are lovingly stuffed with period detail: a houseboat colony on the Thames, clubs Playboy health and golf, an explosion in Notting Hill Gate tube station, a driving test taken in a Vauxhall Nova that turns into a car chase with a Ford Zephyr (or Zodiac), a pile-up of police mopedallists, murder by coach in a farmyard, and what not.

A number of later famous actors appear, among them Leonard Rossiter, James Bolam (Cockney accent replacing Geordie), Phyllida Law and the outrageous Freddie Jones.

The film was adapted by Dick Clement (who also directed) and Ian Le Frenais from a book by Martin Waddell, and made at Shepperton Studios.