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Shouting at the Telly: Sitcom Season – Are You Being Served? Porridge (BBC1); The Coopers vs The Rest; Home from Home, Our Ex-Wife (BBC 2)
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If you are meant to leave the best until last, does that
mean that you put your worst first?If
that’s the case, then the BBC is following that rule with its sitcom
season.One of the headline grabbing
programmes of the season was the remake of Are
You Being Served.There is currently
a renaissance for the work of David Croft and his various co-writers.Dad’s
Army has recently been made into a film with Toby Jones, Billy Nighy et al;
there was a biopic made about messrs Croft and Perry last Christmas and now we
have this remake.In the case of this
one, we have to ask ourselves...why?
The BBC are also remaking classic shows which have been lost
from the archive, so we have Kevin McNally as Tony Hancock on Radio 4 and Simon
Day as Alf Garnett.Fair enough.They are just filling in the gaps.But a complete like-for-like remake?This one-off (please let it be a one-off) is
set in 1988, 3 years after Grace Brothers closed its doors (only to reopen them
7 years later with Grace & Favour,
but let’s not dwell on that).The
original series had been on since 1972 and by 1985 it looked tired.Actually, it looked exactly the same as it
did in 1972.The set, the costumes, the
gags.Now don’t get me wrong, I loved
the original as a child; but as I (and it) became teenagers, I began realising
that humour had changed.By the mid 80’s
the alternative comedy scene was flourishing and double entendres and
stereotypically camp characters were about as funny as big bow tied, velvet
suited comedians. It was of its time, it did what it did, now let’s move on.
I assume the remake is part of the nostalgia fest where
people are rediscovering their guilty pleasures.“Everyone loves Dad’s Army...what else has David done that we can remake...”It Ain’t Half Hot Mum”? ...ah, perhaps
not”.You see, the problem is that just
because someone has written one or two brilliant sitcoms, it doesn’t mean that
everything they touch is gold.For every
‘Allo ‘Allo there is an Oh Doctor Beeching! smudging their
pristine CV.
The remake was written by Derren Litten (of Benidorm and Catherine Tate fame).The
show pretty much felt like it was one of the missing episodes as the gags where
straight out of 1978, not 1988.The
problem it has was that it was neither fish nor fowl.It wasn’t a repeat (they have John Inman and
Molly Sugden in to make them more bearable); it wasn’t a reboot (as was Porridge, but more on that later); it
was, at best, an homage.Sherrie Hewson was
great playing Molly Sugden, playing Mrs Slocombe;Jason Watkins was “very strong” at
impersonating John Inman playing Mr Humphries; and Roy Barraclough did a great
turn as Arthur Brough being Mr Grainger, but none of them played the parts
themselves, they just impersonated the originals.It felt like a Comic Relief sketch, which was perhaps the idea.
If people looked forward to greeting the staff of Grace
Brothers back into their living room, then there was a definite suspicion about
a remake of Porridge.How can anyone match the mannerisms, timing
and delivery of its star...Christopher Biggins.Oh, ok then, Ronnie Barker (but Biggins was in the original and shared a
cell with a heavily made up David Jason).
The killer ingredient that this show had was the original
writers.We wrote about Dick Clement and
Ian La Frenais in the blog here about how they simultaneously created some
classic sitcoms and then effectively killed the genre by creating comedy dramas
such as Auf Wiedersen Pet.They had obviously been persuaded to write
for this remake, and surprisingly, it worked.Kevin Bishop played Fletcher’s grandson so he had a few of the
mannerisms (the killer punch line delivered whilst turning his head over his
shoulder was pure Barker) but he was his own character.Yes, there was soft guard, a bossy Scottish
guard, and a lag who ruled the prison (as there were in the original) but at
least here the actors played them as characters, not caricatures.I did find myself thinking that this could
easily be turned into a series and would sit nicely on BBC 1.
The other trick that producers do when they want to launch a
new comedy without taking too much of a risk is to take the characters back to
their youth.This has already been done
relatively successfully with Last of the
Summer Wine (First of the Summer Wine);
Only Fools and Horses (Rocks and Chips); and Inspector Morse (Endeavour....hold on a mo., one of these things is not like the
others; one of these things just doesn't belong.Flipadoodle, dramas are doing the same trick
as well!). The current sitcom which has the time travel
experience, is Keeping Up Appearances (Young Hyacinth).Presumably we will soon have the Vicar of Dibley when she was just a
curate.
Time Travel seems to be a running theme as they are also
bringing back Goodnight Sweetheart
for one episode (again written by the original writers Laurence Marks and
Maurice Gran).We will have to wait and
see how they fair.
Over on BBC 2 meanwhile we had pilot central. So far we have
had The Coopers vs The Rest, which
was a cross between Out Numbered and Raised by Wolves (which sadly hasn’t
been recommissioned by C4); Home From
Home about a posh and common couple living side by side in a caravan park
(with lodges), which when you remove all the sustainable living stuff, was the
central driving theme behind TheGood Life.You can do a like-for-like comparison between
the hot tub scene and this scene from the Good
Life.There was also Our Ex-Wife, which felt like it would
make a good 90 min feature, but can’t see it running for series after series,
whereas the other two could sit quite comfortably on primetime BBC One.
Frankie Boyle recently came out complaining about the state
of sitcoms on TV; but at the end of week one of the season it’s fair to say
that there have been considerably more hits than misses (on TV and radio) and
that there is life in the genre, even if Mrs
Brown’s Boys won best sitcom of the century.Ok, there is nothing as radical as the Young Ones or The Mighty Boosh in the line-up, but perhaps those only come along
once every generation.I suppose one
good thing is that it is the BBC that’s having a sitcom season and producing
these remakes.If ITV did it, it would
be a very different affair.I’m not sure
the nation is ready for remakes of Love
Thy Neighbour or Mind Your Language.
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