Broadcast live, like nearly all television at the time, the program was largely unscripted, reliant on its star's dependably unpredictable comic imagination.

The grim intention of Yorkshire not to score and win on the first innings, this late summer day at Bath, was too much for the comic imagination of Daniell.

Mr. Levy's comic imagination could conceive of actors, less sensible than himself, who would go gaga when handed five bucks' worth of parchment.

But in films like "Scrooged" and "Quick Change," he is bogged down by scripts that don't begin to match his comic imagination.

Mr. Pryor's brilliant comic imagination and creative use of the blunt cadences of street language were revelations to most Americans.

As such nonsense goes, "Warlock" is unexpectedly entertaining, having been concocted with comic imagination by D. T. Twohy, who wrote the screenplay, and Steve Miner, the director.

Mr. Allen has demonstrated brilliantly in his movies that life's most serious matters, not excluding death and religion, deformity and lunacy, can be grist for the comic imagination.

But its resilient charms, its public characters and its careworn gemutlichkeit also fed the comic imaginations of Paul Mazursky and, of course, Woody Allen.

Though the film could not have been too inexpensive to produce on its Puerto Rican locations, it manages to seem threadbare, mostly because of the lack of a comic imagination.