The Complete and Utter (Sorta) History
of British Comedy
The 1970's: From Dead Parrots to Squashed
Hedgehogs – Part Two
SITCOMS RULE, TOO
While the Pythons and the Goodies were breaking new ground in sketch comedy, producer/writer David Croft was successfully and brilliantly carrying the flag for more traditional fare.
Croft still had a major hit in Dad's Army when one day he received a script from a young writer named Jeremy Lloyd. The story was taken from Lloyd's experiences at a department store called Simpson's and the title was a simple phrase that Simpson's employees probably used time and time again: Are You Being Served?
AYBS? embodied the typical order that existed in British society. Everyone at Grace Brother's Department Store had their position in the store's pecking order and was not expected to stray from it.
The humor that flowed from AYBS? can perhaps be summed up best in a quote from Monty Python: "Grin, grin, wink, wink, nudge nudge...say no more." Croft himself termed it "seaside postcard" humor, meaning that it was laden with innuendo and big chested babes. Not to mention one very camp sales assistant.
The people loved it. John Inman as the fey Mr. Humphries and Mollie Sugden as the brassy Mrs. Slocombe were the breakout performers, but this was very much an ensemble piece that stayed strong even through a number of cast and character changes.
Following the tumult and change of the 1960s, maybe the popularity of AYBS? can be explained by its inherent sense of nostalgia. It harkened back to a more ordered, civilized time when dressing well, good manners and knowing one's place were still of the utmost importance. It also took viewers back to a more simple time. Sure, the Benny Hill style humor was sometimes in questionable taste, but it was done with an air of innocence–the most famous example being that of Mrs. Slocombe's ongoing references to her pussy.
Yet above all, AYBS? was filled with colorful, distinct characters and enough catchphrases to float the proverbial battleship. No matter how many times Mr. Humphries said his signature "I'm free!" or Mrs. Slocombe claimed to be "unanimous in that" viewers couldn't help but laugh.
The show had its many detractors who thought of it as cheap, easy and tasteless, but they were definitely outvoted by millions of viewers. As was the norm with popular 70s sitcoms, the show was milked for everything it was worth. A film was produced in 1977 in which the employees of Grace Brothers went on holiday to Spain. There was also a stage play, an Australian version of the show, plus an attempt to make an American adaptation that didn't make it much past the pilot stage.
As if he didn't have enough to do, Croft also reunited with Dad's Army co-writer Jimmy Perry to create the story of a theatrical troupe based in India during wartime called It Ain't Half Hot Mum.
This show contained many of the same types seen in AYBS? and Dad's Army. Some of the men were camp and effete while others were the blithering, ineffective authority types whose behind was usually saved by the sensible underling. IAHHM gave the Croft/Perry partnership another sizeable hit that ran from 1974-1981.
An unusual Croft misstep occurred in 1978 when not even Mrs. Slocombe herself, Mollie Sugden, could make a hit out of Come Back Mrs. Noah. The concept was promising, with Sugden playing a housewife in the year 2050 who wins a chance to tour a new space exploration craft called the Britannia Seven. The vehicle is not yet in space, of course, but during her visit it accidentally blasts off and the rest of the series revolves around the attempts to get her back.
Croft wrote the series with his Are You Being Served? collaborator Jeremy Lloyd and, along with Sugden, it featured other member of Croft's repertory company, including Ian Lavender (Dad's Army), Gordon Kaye (who later starred in 'Allo 'Allo)–and more. It only lasted one season, proving that perhaps Croft's strength laid in looking at Britain's past, not at its future.
Several other long-running Britcoms were products of the '70s. The marvelous Leonard Rossiter created one of British comedy's most memorable characters when he played the title role in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin.
Reggie Perrin suffers a mid-life crisis of the worst kind when the numbing sameness of his life leads him to fake his own death. Is this his chance at a new start? Well, not really.
Reginald Perrin was one of the earliest and best examples of an adult sitcom that could provoke an equal number of laughs and thoughts. Rossiter created a memorable portrait of a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown and was ably supported by Pauline Yates as his wife. Geoffrey Palmer had one of his first substantial roles as Reggie's brother-in-law, Jimmy Anderson, a former military man who just can't seem to leave the service life behind.
At roughly the same time, Rossiter also starred in another popular series called Rising Damp. He played Rigsby, the grumpy, meddling landlord of a seedy boarding house. His tenants include a medical student (played by Richard Beckinsale, father of Pearl Harbor star Kate Beckinsale) and a young man who is a tribal prince in his African homeland. Rigsby pays the most attention, however, to his female tenant, a love starved spinster named Miss Jones, played by Frances de la Tour.
The fact that he could take on two such dissimilar characters at the same time paid testament to what a great talent Rossiter was and how much was lost when he passed away in 1984 at the age of 57. Rossiter was a driven perfectionist who demanded much of himself and of his co-workers, so when he missed a cue while in a stage production of Joe Orton's Loot, the cast and crew knew something was wrong. They found him in his dressing room, slumped over in a chair, the victim of a heart attack. British comedy lost a legend at much too young of an age.
Tragically, the same fate befell Rossiter's Rising Damp co-star Beckinsale, who suffered a fatal heart attack in 1979 at the age of 31. Becksinsale was also doing double duty, starring in Rising Damp and also another 70s sitcom called Porridge.
It is little known in the States, but Porridge is generally considered one of the all time great Britcoms. It stars Ronnie Barker as habitual thief Norman Stanley Fletcher, who is sentenced to jail for five years. (In fact, the title is a slang expression for prison.) While there he tries to teach his cellmate, a first-offender named Godber (played by Beckinsale) the ropes.
The character of Fletcher was miles away from another that Barker would create during the 70s. In Open All Hours he played a shop owner called Arkwright. He is helped along at the shop by his nephew Granville (David Jason), who is desperate to experience life beyond the small town they inhabit.
Open All Hours was the creation of Roy Clarke, who may be the single most prolific writer in Britcom history. During the three-year gap between the pilot and the first season of Open All Hours he created and wrote the first three series of Last of the Summer Wine, which is now the longest-running situation comedy in television history, now entering its 24th season.
Last of the Summer Wine's is not only memorable because of its characters–the trio of elderly miscreants reliving their youth and the women they love–but it has always been served well by its location. The town of Holmfirth has always been as much a star of the show as Brian Wilde, Peter Sallis and the late Bill Owen. This setting, along with the music and scripts, combine to create a strong sense of time and place that is rare in any television program, let alone a sitcom. Like AYBS? viewers have been willing to follow this show through numerous cast and character changes.
Those are only a couple of the programs that can be attributed to Clarke, a former teacher who has carved a niche for himself with his uncanny ability to create characters and dialogue that perfectly reflect the north of England. Of course, during the 90s, Clarke would prove himself capable of creating the ultimate social snob when he wrote Keeping Up Appearances.
While Clarke depicted life in the north of England, Bob Larbey and John Esmonde tackled life in suburban London with The Good Life. Like Reggie Perrin, Tom Good is going through a mid-life crisis. Rather than fake his own death, however, he quits his job on his 40th birthday and decides to become self-sufficient.
He persuades his wife Barbara to support him with this idea, but little do they know what they've gotten themselves into. Everything will be home grown and made and their suburban backyard turns into a home for goats, pigs, and other things that really don't belong in suburban backyards. Luckily, their neighbors, the socially upscale Leadbetters, eventually learn to live with goats, pigs, and mud. The success of the series impacted the career of its female leads the most. Felicity Kendal, as Barbara Good, became the object of every man's affection and, following her star-making turn as the uppity neighbor Margo, Penelope Keith was rewarded with her own sitcom, To The Manor Born.
To The Manor Born deals with a subject seen time and time again in British comedy: the class system. Keith gets to play another snooty blue blood in this series, but one who has fallen on hard times. Following the death of her husband, Audrey fforbes-Hamilton finds that she has unknowingly inherited something she didn't expect: a large amount of debt. She is then forced to sell her beloved family home, Grantleigh Manor, to the nouveau-riche Richard DeVere. This development plays havoc with Audrey's pride as she tries to save face with her social crowd.
DeVere is played by the suave Peter Bowles, who was actually the first choice to play Keith's husband in The Good Life, but declined the offer due to a theatrical commitment.
Over the course of twenty-one episodes the couple played cat-and-mouse and in the end said, "I do," meaning that Audrey could once again live in her home. This final episode still remains one of the most-watched programs ever in UK television history, with an audience of approximately 24,000,000.
Other sitcoms of the 70s included On The Buses, which was the British equivalent of Three's Company–vulgar, cheap and critically panned, but the viewers loved it and kept it going for six seasons. It was simply the story of a working-class bloke (played by Reg Varney) who, while not being driven crazy by his overly protective mother, his sister, and his lazy brother-in-law, was driving a bus and scaring up some trouble with his mate Jack.
Writer Carla Lane, who already had a hit with The Liver Birds, the saga of two Liverpool lasses, scored a hit with Butterflies. This somewhat downbeat Britcom is the story of Ria Parkinson (played by Wendy Craig), a woman going through a mid-life crisis, who feels like she'd better start grabbing life by its tail and fill the emptiness she feels before its too late. How to explain this–and her growing attraction to an unhappily married man–to her family is something she finds difficult to do. Geoffrey Palmer played her boring but responsible husband, Ben, and Nicholas Lyndhurst had an early role as the Parkinsons' son, Adam. The show's central theme–the temptation of adultery–is one that Lane would revisit later when she wrote The Mistress, starring Felicity Kendal.
DOUBLE THE FUN
The 70s were also a great time for British double acts. Ronnie Barker (when not playing Fletcher and Arkwright) teamed up with his physical opposite–the tiny, bespectacled Ronnie Corbett–as The Two Ronnies.
The Two Ronnies was more of your basic variety show with Barker and Corbett playing a number of different characters as well as engaging in musical numbers and spoof newscasts. During each show Corbett also had a solo spot, sitting in a large chair and doing a rambling monologue about anything and everything.
The show had a number of writers, including David Renwick, who would later write One Foot in the Grave and David Nobbs, who wrote Reginald Perrin. There were also contributions from all of the Pythons except for Gilliam. Yet the success of the show boiled down to the chemistry between the two men and the show remained popular for 15 years. The duo rang down the curtain on their partnership with a special in 1985 and Barker retired for good three years later. Corbett, however, resurrected his "in the chair" monologues during the late 90s for Ben Elton's series The Man from Auntie.
Though less known in America, the importance of another double act - Morecambe and Wise - cannot be underestimated.
Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise had been around since the late 50s, but their self-titled BBC series really took off during the late 60s/early 70s and sealed their reputation as a British comedy classic. Like The Two Ronnies, these men had a chemistry and a genuine affection for each other that could not be denied. Unlike Corbett and Barker, however, Morecambe and Wise relied only upon very few writers who kept the show going with its trademark Benny Hill-style leering humor and energetic musical numbers.
The duo spent many years taking their show between the BBC and its competitor and sadly, their final series (in 1983) did not allow the duo to go out on a high note. Eric Morecambe, who had suffered from heart problems for years, passed away in 1984, but their show is still remembered as one of the high water marks in British television comedy.
THE GREAT SCOT ARRIVES
The 70s also heralded the arrival of one of the greatest of all comedic storytellers, Billy Connolly.
Connolly was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1942. He worked on the docks, had a stint in the military, and started his showbiz career on the coffee house circuit, playing the banjo and singing politically conscious folk songs. His act eventually developed to where it was much more about comedy than about music.
Connolly's unfailing Scots charm, nimble tongue and even more nimble mind made him quite a natural for the chat show circuit. Appearances on Parkinson and other shows, as well as the release of his first album, made him a star outside of his native Scotland.
His concert appearances soon began selling out and established him as a performer of the highest order. Not many people are capable of keeping an audience spellbound for two hours or more, but Connolly can. His material is sometimes political, sometimes autobiographical, but always honest and always hysterical.
Connolly later made a move to America when he replaced Howard Hesseman on Head of the Class, which led to another sitcom called Billy. Neither of these was an enormous success, probably because his personality is just too big to be contained to the small screen and the constraints of a thirty-minute sitcom.
Connolly has also done straight acting and received very good notices co-starring opposite Dame Judi Dench in the 1996 historical drama Mrs. Brown. It is typical of his natural irreverence that when he first found out Dench had expressed an interest in the role of Queen Victoria, Connolly shot back that his first choice was pudgy Roger Rabbit star Bob Hoskins.
Now closing in on 60 and a grandfather, Connolly shows no signs of slowing down. His tours still routinely sell out, he was a Celebrity Castaway in Antarctica (where yes, he actually danced around naked–the fool) and he has several films in the works.
NOT THE NINE O'CLOCK NEWS
The Pythons blasted in the seventies with their groundbreaking lunacy, but overall, this decade is often thought of as the age of the twee sitcom as epitomized by The Good Life. The last year of the decade, however, was a transitional one - a year when comfortable, safe suburbia was replaced by the cheek and impertinence of Not The Nine O'Clock News.
NTNOCN replaced the second season of Fawlty Towers on BBC's schedule and the original cast was comprised of Rowan Atkinson, Mel Smith, Chris Langham and Australian comedienne Pamela Stephenson. Langham left following the first season and his role was taken by Griff Rhys Jones.
Rowan Atkinson may be the only name familiar to Americans, but the entire cast became household names in the UK. NTNOCN was an important step in Atkinson's career and it gave an early glimpse of what would make him famous–the verbal pyrotechnics, the skits where he played vicars or stern headmasters, and the physical stunts that he would later perfect as Mr. Bean. Believe it or not, he even sang.
The others brought in their own strengths, with Pamela Stephenson in particular providing some great impressions–especially that of your typical BBC newsreader.
The spoof news show has been done many times, but NTNOCN distinguished itself by being very fast paced, very smart, often topical and written by a slew of highly talented people. Among the numerous contributors were Richard Curtis (Vicar of Dibley), Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), Nigel Planer (The Young Ones), Peter Richardson (The Comic Strip Presents...) and American Ruby Wax, who would go on to become a celebrity in the UK and the script editor for Absolutely Fabulous.
The reason there were so many writers was the fact along with the main writing staff, the BBC would allow wannabe writers to send in jokes and skits for possible use. Not a bad idea at all, seeing as it would allow the network a chance to discover and develop new talent.
The show is remembered for some of the sharpest political satire since the heyday of That Was The Week That Was during the 60s. One of the more controversial jokes was a short newsblurb containing a shot of Muslims bowing and praying to Mecca. A voiceover then says, "And the search goes on for the Ayatollah Khomeni's contact lens."
There were also spoofs of rock bands as well as the increasing influence of MTV (a catchy tune called "Nice Video, Shame About The Song") and a skit about hedgehogs being squashed under a truck, for which Rowan Atkinson issued a mock apology.
Not The Nine O'Clock News was the beginning of a revolution that in the next decade would turn into downright anarchy. But more on that in the next issue, when The Insider's History of British Comedy continues into the 1980s.
The Insider, December 2001
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