The authors
start with the advantage, if it be an advantage, that the principal
characters are already familiar to the audience through the medium of
Captain BAIRNSFATHER's popular drawings; but they have not been content
with reproducing their well-known, now almost hackneyed, adventures, but
have added many others which are new and yet "come into the picture."
Their greatest piece of luck was in finding a comedian exactly fitted to
fill the part of the humble hero. Mr. ARTHUR BOURCHIER as _Old Bill_ is
absolutely "it." His make-up is perfect; he might have stepped out of
the drawing, or sat for it, whichever you please. But, much more than
that, he seems to have exactly realised the sort of man _Old Bill_
probably is in real life--slow-speaking and stolid in manner, yet with a
vein of common-sense underlying his apparent stupidity; much addicted to
beer and other liquids, but not brutalized thereby; and, while often
grousing and grumbling, nevertheless possessed almost unconsciously of a
strong sense of duty and an undaunted determination to see it through.
It is a tribute to the essential truthfulness of Captain BAIRNSFATHER'S
conception and Mr. BOURCHIER'S acting that one comes away from _The
Better 'Ole_ feeling that there must be thousands of _Old Bills_ at the
Front fighting for our freedom.
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