"Modern Times", directed Charlie Chaplin

Movie, 1936

Satirical situations and a hard time for Chaplin's tramp in a hostile, exploitative industrial environment, before salvation is suggested through a 'gamin' (street urchin). The physical comedy and repeatedly unlucky antics of the well-meaning duo point to the uncaring, greedy society, best illustrated at the beginning of the film, before the the gamin's emergence, and through the casual dictatorial style used by the CEO of the tramp's original employer. Some iconic scenes and empathy generated as the hapless couple struggle with the tramp's continual failures.

"Laughing Gas" by PG Wodehouse

Novel, 1936

Wodehouse with an element of science-fiction and a switch of identities in a dentist's surgery following a misadventure with the eponymous laughing gas, all of which leaves a young Hollywood brat's body being taken by a toff from The Drones and vice versa. These misfiring figures are then let loose in a familiar world of fearsome aunt-like-authority figures, drunken bounders, clumsy toughs, sly gardeners and plot twists which trip, delightfully, one into the other. The Hollywood setting allows a few pokes at a different society, although despite this, and despite a lack of Wodehouse A-list characters, this is all wonderfully, sublimely familiar.