Are these 20 classics really as good as we thought they were?


DRAMA 

Dixon Of Dock Green

BBC, 1955-76

Evening all. Actually, PC George Dixon always said ‘Good evening all’, which is just one of the many things people get wrong about the show. I had remembered it as purely paternalistic and cosy and, yes, there is something in that. One early episode has Dixon (played by an avuncular Jack Warner) and a fellow police officer swapping garden cuttings – carnations – which is something you never get to see in Line Of Duty, for example. In another, the only crime is a stolen wallet ‘containing £10’. But these early episodes are fascinating social history. George asks a young woman: ‘Are you married, Pam? No? Oh, I’m sorry about that.’ (Poor Pam. A spinster! At 23!) However, the later episodes, where Dixon is still a bobby on the beat – is he the least promoted cop ever? – are surprisingly darker. The 1970 episode Wasteland, about a missing policeman, is set against a troubling, post-industrial landscape (the abandoned docks) and it doesn’t end well or reassuringly. It is Dixon Of Dock Green yet bleak. With a suicide. I had no idea.

The worry is that in a world of Fleabag, comedies like The Good Life will disappoint. But it doesn’t

The worry is that in a world of Fleabag, comedies like The Good Life will disappoint. But it doesn’t

Dixon Of Dock Green. These early episodes are fascinating social history. George asks a young woman: ‘Are you married, Pam? No? Oh, I’m sorry about that’

Dixon Of Dock Green. These early episodes are fascinating social history. George asks a young woman: ‘Are you married, Pam? No? Oh, I’m sorry about that’

Dixon Of Dock Green. These early episodes are fascinating social history. George asks a young woman: ‘Are you married, Pam? No? Oh, I’m sorry about that’

Watchability Medium. Worth watching but mostly for the social history and also to see how policing was accomplished – with landlines, having to quiz the milkman, or hanging up a coat with a wallet in the pocket to trap a thief. Clever.

How to watch it DVD box set, YouTube

Upstairs Downstairs

ITV, 1971-75

Welcome to 165 Eaton Place, where the doorbell sounds before the cord is pulled, and the light goes out before the candle has been extinguished, and furniture has obviously been shifted to make way for the camera. But I still won’t hear a word against it. This series is especially close to my heart as I used to play ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ with my little sister. I was Mrs Bridges, the cook, while she was Ruby, the kitchen maid, and I would shout: ‘Roooooooby, have you chopped them carrots yet, girl?’ And that was about it. But we liked it. A critical and popular hit shown all over the world – a billion people are said to have watched – it’s set in a Belgravia townhouse from 1903 and depicts the servants (downstairs – Hudson!) and the aristocratic Bellamy family (upstairs). And while it doesn’t have the Downtown Abbey-style production values we expect today, it is still entrancing and involving and I found myself watching quite a few episodes just to check how the new under-parlourmaid, Sarah (Pauline Collins), was settling in. She had claimed to be half French, which did not impress Mrs Bridges, who would have been a Brexiteer, I think. (‘We don’t want no foreign muck here.’) Big subjects are tackled. Rape, abortion, suicide, and that’s just in the first series – and later, doesn’t Alfred the coachman run off with a baron? – but it’s also very funny. ‘I’m as behind as a cow’s tail,’ says Mrs Bridges, grumblingly.

Watchability High. Start at episode one, which was, interestingly, written by Fay Weldon.

How to watch it Amazon Prime, DVD box set

The Avengers

ITV, 1961-69

The third to fifth seasons of The Avengers are acknowledged as the best, and series five, episode 11 (Epic) is a corker. Here, our debonair spy John Steed is aided by fellow agent Emma Peel (Diana Rigg – ‘Is she the most beautiful woman in England?’, asked one television critic at the time) through a plot that is wonderfully bonkers. It involves a mad German film director and being chased by cowboys and Indians (can’t explain, go watch) and there’s also a circular saw because, of course, there is a circular saw. It is supremely sexy and stylish and not meant to be taken seriously. It often feels, in fact, as if Peel and Steed are playing out some private joke, which is a good thing. And Peel is not purely decoration. She is intrepid and smart and kicks ass. On top of being the most beautiful woman in England. At that time.

Watchability Huge. It’s a lot of fun and also the Sixties fashion is exquisite. Steed is all bowler hat and umbrella at work, but for leisure? A cardigan with cowhide panels! I have never seen anything like it, ever.

How to watch it Amazon Prime, DVD box set, YouTube

The Darling Buds Of May

ITV, 1991-93

This adaptation of the novellas by HE Bates was a sensation at the time and it made a star of Catherine Zeta-Jones, and I had remembered it as joyful. Here was Pa Larkin (David Jason) and Ma Larkin (Pam Ferris) and their many children, all running around and loving each other and nature and feasting on strawberries as big as your fist and blowing whatever money they had. It was… here it comes; you knew it was coming… perfick! Or was it? Two decades on and I couldn’t get past the opening episode where Ma and Pa use their beautiful 17-year-old daughter, Mariette (Zeta-Jones shimmying around in super-tight jodhpurs) as a honey trap to seduce the tax inspector. They’re pimping her! I was minded to shout at Mariette: ‘Get out, love, and get out fast!’ You do have to make allowances for changing times. And I don’t want to be a party-pooper. But still.

Watchability Low. Steer clear, even.

How to watch it DVD box set, Britbox

The Avengers is a lot of fun and also the Sixties fashion is exquisite. Steed is all bowler hat and umbrella at work, but for leisure? A cardigan with cowhide panels!

The Avengers is a lot of fun and also the Sixties fashion is exquisite. Steed is all bowler hat and umbrella at work, but for leisure? A cardigan with cowhide panels!

The Avengers is a lot of fun and also the Sixties fashion is exquisite. Steed is all bowler hat and umbrella at work, but for leisure? A cardigan with cowhide panels!

The Darling Buds Of May. Two decades on and I couldn’t get past the opening episode where Ma and Pa use their beautiful daughter, Mariette as a honey trap to seduce the tax inspector

The Darling Buds Of May. Two decades on and I couldn’t get past the opening episode where Ma and Pa use their beautiful daughter, Mariette as a honey trap to seduce the tax inspector

The Darling Buds Of May. Two decades on and I couldn’t get past the opening episode where Ma and Pa use their beautiful daughter, Mariette as a honey trap to seduce the tax inspector

All Creatures Great And Small

BBC, 1978-90

Siegfried! James! Tristan! Tricky-Woo!* I am trying to sound excited in the absence of actually being excited. This was the series that your nan watched and, set initially in the Thirties, it was nostalgic even then. Based on the memoirs of Yorkshire vet James Herriot, it starred Christopher Timothy who, I can now see, was quite hot. (Nan never said anything about that.) Herriot arrives in Darrowby as assistant vet to eccentric Siegfried (Robert Hardy), who will later be joined by his brother, Tristan (Peter Davison). It’s not as sentimental as you might think. Series one, episode one, and a tortoise is saved, and a bull is saved (sunstroke), but the horse with torsion that you expect to be saved? Had to be shot. So sad. But the landscape is spectacular, the tweed action is full-on, and it does have a gentle charm. Even if the accompanying music is overheated and won’t leave you alone.

Watchability Not exactly urgent.

How to watch it DVD, YouTube, Britbox

*Tricky-Woo, the pampered Pekingese, received so much fan mail someone had to be employed to reply.

Z-Cars

BBC, 1962-78

This moved police drama on from Dixon Of Dock Green by taking its coppers off the beat and putting them into cars, usually Ford Zephyrs, which look a bit rubbish now but were new and exciting at the time. It made stars of Stratford Johns, Frank Windsor and Brian Blessed, and if you go back early enough (1963) you can glimpse a very young John Thaw (age 21 – adorable). I was more a fan of its spin-off, Softly, Softly, but there is much here to enjoy, if only because if you go for some of the Seventies episodes it’s like travelling back in a time machine to when cigarettes were 17p a pack, bathroom suites were avocado and a uniformed police officer would knock back a pint before getting behind the wheel of his patrol car. But narratively, it does move glacially slowly. Waste, from 1974, stars a very young Lewis Collins (adorable) as a fella who has been locked up in an attic for two years and it felt as if it took two years to get to why. Still, the wallpaper is insane.

Watchability Medium. Again, interesting social history but sooooooo slooooooow.

How to watch it DVD box set, YouTube

The Sweeney is pacy and kinetic, always on the move, as they crash though empty cardboard boxes (or empty oil drums) and equip themselves with knuckle-dusters and coshes to take on dangerous armed robbers whom they will, inevitably, hold up against some wall

The Sweeney is pacy and kinetic, always on the move, as they crash though empty cardboard boxes (or empty oil drums) and equip themselves with knuckle-dusters and coshes to take on dangerous armed robbers whom they will, inevitably, hold up against some wall

The Sweeney is pacy and kinetic, always on the move, as they crash though empty cardboard boxes (or empty oil drums) and equip themselves with knuckle-dusters and coshes to take on dangerous armed robbers whom they will, inevitably, hold up against some wall

John Alderton and Joan Collins in Tales Of The Unexpected. The acting, even from such big stars, is overstated

John Alderton and Joan Collins in Tales Of The Unexpected. The acting, even from such big stars, is overstated

John Alderton and Joan Collins in Tales Of The Unexpected. The acting, even from such big stars, is overstated

The Sweeney

ITV, 1975-78

In the Seventies this was the cop show that mattered. And if it felt like everyone watched it, it was because they did. (Well, 20 million did, and you were nobody next day at school if you hadn’t seen it.) It was the first UK police drama series to incorporate highly stylised violence, macho cops who did not play by the rules and Ford Granadas that would perform handbrake turns before crashing through piles of cardboard boxes stacked up for no reason at all. (Always empty cardboard boxes. Unless it was empty oil drums.) It stars the brilliant John Thaw as DI Regan, who was teamed up with DS George Carter (Dennis Waterman) and they smoked too much and drank too much and had the pallor to confirm this is so. It is pacy and kinetic, always on the move, as they crash though empty cardboard boxes (or empty oil drums) and equip themselves with knuckle-dusters and coshes to take on dangerous armed robbers whom they will, inevitably, hold up against some wall. The dialogue is spare but terrific. Not just ‘Shut it!’ and ‘You’re nicked!’ but also: ‘I’m gonna come down on you so hard you’re going to have to reach up to tie your shoe laces!’

Watchability High. Still massively entertaining, and kipper ties – will they ever make a comeback? However, you do have to suck up the sexism (George, after staring at a woman’s cleavage: ‘Cor, that Sheila ain’t ’alf got a lunch on ’er!’)

How to watch it DVD box set, YouTube

Poldark

BBC, 1975-77

I was mad for Poldark as a hormonal teenager, loved the Cap’n more than words can say, and the original series still works, I am extremely happy to report. True, the accents are sometimes iffy, there are only two camera angles (close and not as close) and the indoor sets are stagey, but what made this Poldark so special was the socking sexual chemistry between the Cap’ n (Robin Ellis) and Demelza (Angharad Rees). (I have always remembered Demelza’s first words to him: ‘Drop my knickers for a shillin’, I will.’) In the recent remake (starring Eleanor Tomlinson and Aidan Turner) the sexual chemistry wasn’t as strong, despite all that topless scything. Acting-wise, Ellis is wonderful, as is Rees, while Jill Townsend is wonderfully frosty as Elizabeth, and Ralph Bates has a ball as scheming banker George Warleggan. Love, love, love.

Watchability High. Get to it now.

How to watch it Amazon Prime, DVD box set

Tales Of The Unexpected

ITV, 1979-88

I always watched with my mother on Friday nights and also with my sister if she wasn’t too busy in the kitchen (‘Roooooby, you peeled them potatoes yet, girl?’). It was based (at least initially) on the Roald Dahl short stories that were unsettling and creepy and always ended with an unforeseen twist. Even the opening titles – a silhouetted woman dancing in front of a roulette wheel – were somehow unsettling and creepy. But onto the tales, which did attract huge stars. The Umbrella Man, for example, starred John Mills and Michael Gambon, while Lamb To The Slaughter starred Susan George and Brian Blessed. I watched both and easily foresaw the twists, but that could just be from residual memory. The acting, even from such big stars, is overstated, and I don’t know if everyone was more forgiving back then, but the plots are plainly ludicrous. You can’t immediately identify fingerprints at a crime scene, for instance. So it hasn’t stood up well, and it is also fabulously cruel, with most of that cruelty being aimed at women. It gave me the shudders, not in a good way. (Yes, in Lamb To The Slaughter she killed her husband with the leg of lamb she then feeds to the police, but only because he was so fabulously cruel to her first.)

Watchability Low. Alas.

How to watch it DVD box set, YouTube

The Singing Detective

BBC, 1986

This six-part series from Dennis Potter was the talk of its day as it was like nothing else we’d ever seen. It stars a dazzling Michael Gambon as Philip Marlow, a pulp crime writer with the horrendous psoriatic condition that has rendered him a prisoner in his own scaly, lesion-covered skin. (Not going to lie, it is hard to look.) He lies in a hospital bed, unable to move, his hands clenched in gnarled half-fists, railing like Job and feeling (understandably) sorry for himself. In his feverish mind episodes from his novel, also called The Singing Detective, start to mingle with painful childhood memories that in turn mingle with the visualisation of musical numbers. His doctors and nurses may suddenly break into song and dance, for instance. Watching week by week, you got some of it, but if you binge-watch all of it now – guilty as charged, your honour, and it’s not as if I have the time! – you can make much more sense of the connected layers (and layers and layers) and the psychological subtext and its meaning. It’s about understanding the root of Marlow’s unhappiness, which is what he desperately needs to understand too. It is quite pervy about women – they are all sex objects in some form or another – but as it’s so riveting, we’ll let that go.

Watchability If, of the 20 shows I’ve revisited here, you can only watch one, make it this.

How to watch it DVD box set 

COMEDY

The Goodies

BBC, 1970-82

It was just a nagging thought at first but after a couple of episodes I was 100 per cent sure: this isn’t funny. I watched a few more, just to be 100 per cent sure I was 100 per cent sure, and it was confirmed. (I can’t work out what this now makes me. Two hundred per cent sure?) This was written and performed by Bill Oddie, Graeme Garden and Tim Brooke-Taylor who, like the Pythons, came out of the Cambridge Footlights – Brooke-Taylor was nearly a Python himself – but there any connection ends. The Goodies is witless slapstick – being chased by a giant Dougal, butter exploding from a fridge – as overseen by three smug, self-congratulatory men. Also, the tandem. Why is that funny? Why?

Most successful sitcoms throw people together in situations they can’t escape, and there’s absolutely no escape for Fletch (Ronnie Barker) and his mates as they do time in Slade Prison

Most successful sitcoms throw people together in situations they can’t escape, and there’s absolutely no escape for Fletch (Ronnie Barker) and his mates as they do time in Slade Prison

Most successful sitcoms throw people together in situations they can’t escape, and there’s absolutely no escape for Fletch (Ronnie Barker) and his mates as they do time in Slade Prison

Watchability Low, low, low.

How to watch it DVD box set

Porridge

BBC, 1973-77

Porridge was such a family event in our household when I was growing up, even my little sister was excused her duties. (‘Rooooooby, stop gutting that fish, girl and get in here.’) And it is still vital and funny and consistently perfect. Most successful sitcoms throw people together in situations they can’t escape, and there’s absolutely no escape for Fletch (Ronnie Barker) and his mates as they do time in Slade Prison. Written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, there is genius in the writing, but there is the genius of Barker’s performance too. For instance: Warren walks into Fletch’s cell where one of the characters has just returned from the pig farm. Warren says: ‘I love the smell of pigs, it reminds me of home.’ Fletch: ‘Oh, were you brought up on a farm?’ Warren (confused): ‘No…’ Barker’s face at his reply was pure gold. The prison’s deprivations were never disguised, yet Fletch won’t let the ‘nerks’ grind him down. He is no fool and scores many ‘little victories’ – an extra tin of pineapple chunks, a cushy job in the library, befuddling Mackay – yet is also decent and humane, and his relationship with his young cellmate, Godber (Richard Beckinsale), is truly touching.

Watchability Never tires. Quite fun, too, noting all the ways they avoid actual swearing – ‘Naff off!’, ‘Darn your own naffing socks’ – and an interesting little fact? To finish up? ‘Naff’, as a word, was not at all in common usage and was virtually unknown until Porridge revived it.

They say that a truly great sitcom could easily be rewritten as a tragedy, and that has to hold true for Steptoe And Son

They say that a truly great sitcom could easily be rewritten as a tragedy, and that has to hold true for Steptoe And Son

They say that a truly great sitcom could easily be rewritten as a tragedy, and that has to hold true for Steptoe And Son

Rodney Bewes and James Bolam in Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? It's a half-hour of homophobia and xenophobia

Rodney Bewes and James Bolam in Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? It's a half-hour of homophobia and xenophobia

Rodney Bewes and James Bolam in Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? It’s a half-hour of homophobia and xenophobia

How to watch it Netflix, Amazon Prime, Britbox

It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum

BBC, 1974-81

What do we find here? Indians that are servile with wobbly Peter Sellers heads. Michael Bates blacked up – yes, blacked up – as Rangi Ram, who is stereotypically shifty. Windsor Davies kicking some Indian but that’s fine, as ‘he’s low-caste’. Tell you what, let’s just pretend none of this ever happened. That’s probably best all round.

Watchability Watch what?

How to watch it DVD box set

Steptoe and Son

BBC, 1962-1974

They say that a truly great sitcom could easily be rewritten as a tragedy, and that has to hold true for Steptoe And Son. Albert (Wilfrid Brambell) and Harold Steptoe (Harry H Corbett) are a father and son who run a rag-and-bone business. Harold has pretensions and aspirations, but his ambitions are always being thwarted by his father, who fears being left alone, so there is that. But there is also another layer of tragedy: Harold thinks he would amount to something if it weren’t for Albert. But would he? And is that the true tragedy? The episode I most remember is Divided We Stand (series seven, episode six) where Harold’s decorating ambitions are frustrated so he partitions the house into two, although not before exploding with rage and shouting at Albert: ‘You are a dyed-in-the-wool, fascist, reactionary, squalid little, “know your place”, “don’t rise above yourself”, “don’t get out of your hole” complacent little turd. You are morally, spiritually and physically a festering fly-blown heap of accumulated filth.’ Albert: ‘What do you want for your tea?’ It is so painful (and tragic) you can only marvel at the fact that the series also made you properly laugh. This has to be down to the brilliant writing (Ray Galton and Alan Simpson) and the way it superbly exploits the tensions arising from two complex characters trapped together. Plus, both Brambell and Corbett are superb and there’s the physical comedy. Albert’s dentures dropping into his steak-and-kidney pie, for instance, or both trying to watch a football match on the telly that is divided down the middle.

Watchability As it’s a masterpiece, why do you even need to ask?

How to watch it DVD box set, YouTube

Rising Damp

ITV, 1974-78

Rising Damp. ‘It was a different time,’ some will say, but that’s not especially helpful as you’re trying to sit through it in 2020

Rising Damp. ‘It was a different time,’ some will say, but that’s not especially helpful as you’re trying to sit through it in 2020

Rising Damp. ‘It was a different time,’ some will say, but that’s not especially helpful as you’re trying to sit through it in 2020

Leonard Rossiter’s first great sitcom role was as Rigsby, the wheedling, moth-eaten landlord with delusions of grandeur who operates a down-at-heel boarding house. His tenants include lovelorn Miss Jones (Frances De La Tour), muddled student Alan (Richard Beckinsale) and Philip (Don Warrington), who bills himself as the son of an African chief. ‘It was a different time,’ some will say, but that’s not especially helpful as you’re trying to sit through it in 2020. Rigsby may say to Philip: ‘You’re not dealing with savages now. You are dealing with educated white men.’ Or it’s Philip saying he’s studying town and country planning at college and Rigsby sniggering sarcastically: ‘I bet there is real demand for that in the jungle.’ Some will also say that as Philip is so clearly superior in every way, it’s small-minded, pathetic Rigsby we’re laughing at, but that defence is dangerous, as one person’s caricature can be another person’s champion. (See also: Alf Garnett.) It’s complex. Yes, the performances are terrific (I could never get bored of Frances De La Tour), but fun to revisit 40 years on? Possibly not.

Watchability It’s not whether you should but whether you can.

How to watch it Amazon Prime, ITV Hub

Spitting Image. The puppets were works of art and the voices were wonderfully spot-on, but while we remember certain killer blows, many jokes didn’t land

Spitting Image. The puppets were works of art and the voices were wonderfully spot-on, but while we remember certain killer blows, many jokes didn’t land

Spitting Image. The puppets were works of art and the voices were wonderfully spot-on, but while we remember certain killer blows, many jokes didn’t land

The Kenny Everett

Video Show

ITV, 1978-81

Full disclosure: I was never a fan at the time. Too anarchic, too manic. I was more a sitcom in Surbiton kind of gal. I can now see that Everett was an extraordinary one-off as well as endlessly inventive. There were characters (including the especially unlovely Sid Snot), sketches, Hot Gossip grinding their ‘naughty bits’ (afraid so), and to say it was star-studded doesn’t even get near it. One episode features Elton John and Kate Bush and Lindisfarne. After Everett fell out with Thames Television he was taken up by the BBC for The Kenny Everett Television Show, 1981-88. This featured less music but otherwise it was business as usual with the addition of new characters – Gizzard Puke, Cupid Stunt – as well as Cleo Rocos constantly running around in frilly underwear (afraid so).

Watchability If you liked it then you will like it now. For anyone else it’s exhausting and also feels like a cry for help. In some way.

How to watch it DVD box set, YouTube

Spitting Image

ITV, 1984-1996

The puppets were works of art and the voices were wonderfully spot-on, but while we remember certain killer blows – bossy Thatcher and her ‘vegetables’, John Major playing with his peas, David Steel as a tiny pipsqueak sitting in the pocket of David Owen – many jokes either didn’t land or went on for far, far too long. (I thought a Bob Dylan skit would never end.) The show’s topicality required scripts to be written at a frantic rate, and that does show.

Watchability If you must, opt for the ‘Best Bits’ compilations on YouTube so you don’t have to sit through a never-ending Bob Dylan.

How to watch it DVD box set, YouTube

Whatever Happened To the Likely Lads?

BBC, 1973-74

This is one of those rare instances where the sequel (the Likely Lads ran from 1964-1966) was much better and proved more popular than the original. And I’m gutted. Truly. I have nothing but fond memories of Whatever Happened…; have nothing but fond memories of Bob (Rodney Bewes) and Terry (James Bolam) hanging out and getting on each other’s nerves because Bob craves to be middle class while Terry is adrift in life but believes he’s morally superior as he has not sold out. I have especially fond memories of No Hiding Place (series one, episode seven), where Bob and Terry are determined not to find out the football score. But it’s also, alas, a half-hour of homophobia and xenophobia. Terry won’t have his hair cut by a male hairdresser, as distinct from a barber, because all male hairdressers are ‘fairies’ and ‘poofs’. Terry later says you can’t trust Koreans because they are ‘sinister, like all Orientals’, and as for the Egyptians, they are ‘greasy, although not as greasy as the French’ while ‘Spaniards are lazy’. There is more, but you get the picture.

Watchability See Rising Damp. Gutted, gutted, gutted.

How to watch it DVD box set

The Good Life

BBC, 1975-78

The worry is that in a world of Fleabag, comedies like The Good Life will disappoint. But it doesn’t. All these years after Tom Good (Richard Briers) decided to jack in his job designing plastic toys for cereal packets and lead a life of self-sufficiency with his wife Barbara (Felicity Kendal, on whom the entire country had a crush) it is still exquisite. Exquisitely written (by John Esmonde and Bob Larbey), exquisitely funny, exquisitely performed.

In lesser hands, Margo and Jerry would have purely looked down on Tom and Barbara, but instead the relationship is characterised by a fond bafflement that speaks of real friendship

In lesser hands, Margo and Jerry would have purely looked down on Tom and Barbara, but instead the relationship is characterised by a fond bafflement that speaks of real friendship

In lesser hands, Margo and Jerry would have purely looked down on Tom and Barbara, but instead the relationship is characterised by a fond bafflement that speaks of real friendship

The interplay between the Goods and their aspirational neighbours, Margo (Penelope Keith) and Jerry (Paul Eddington), is especially masterful. In lesser hands, Margo and Jerry would have purely looked down on Tom and Barbara, but instead the relationship is characterised by a fond bafflement that speaks of real friendship, which adds a whole other, deeper layer. Also, whenever it is in danger of becoming too safe and twee, it takes a swerve. In The Wind-Break War (series three, episode five) they all get drunk on Tom’s peapod wine, and while Jerry and Barbara are stacking the freezer with dirty plates thinking it’s the dishwasher, Margo is confessing to Tom that she was called ‘Starchy’ at school and weeps: ‘I’m not a complete woman, Tom. I haven’t got a sense of humour. I became the butt of jokes and have been the butt ever since…’ It tears your heart out. And it’s clear to me now that Margo is one of the great comic creations of all time.

Watchability Super-high. Not dated at all.

How to watch it Britbox, Amazon Prime

Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em

BBC, 1973-78

‘Ooh, Betty. The cat’s done a whoopsie in my beret.’ Was there any playground that didn’t ring with that in the Seventies? I doubt it. We loved Frank Spencer (Michael Crawford), who was married to long-suffering Betty (Michele Dotrice), and who couldn’t put a foot right. Everything he touches falls to pieces. He destroys his brother-in-law’s home. He leaves a job interviewer on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He renders asunder a small seaside hotel. The theme is ineptitude , and Frank is, in a way, similar to Basil Fawlty in that everything he does to make a situation better makes it worse, and disasters never come singly. Instead, each sparks another in a nightmarish chain reaction of farce. It’s the same with Charlie Chaplin, Jacques Tati, Jerry Lewis, but what carries the day here is the intensity of Crawford’s performance – he leaps and twists and twitches like an exposed nerve – and the jaw-dropping, elaborate stunts, performed by Crawford himself.

Watchability Medium. But then, on the other hand, Frank doesn’t have a prejudiced bone in his body, and it’s all fine on that score, so maybe I’ll revise that to ‘high’. It’s safe!

How to watch it DVD box set, YouTube 

‘Ooh, Betty. The cat’s done a whoopsie in my beret.’ Was there any playground that didn’t ring with that in the Seventies? I doubt it. We loved Frank Spencer (Michael Crawford), who was married to long-suffering Betty (Michele Dotrice), and who couldn’t put a foot right. Everything he touches falls to pieces

‘Ooh, Betty. The cat’s done a whoopsie in my beret.’ Was there any playground that didn’t ring with that in the Seventies? I doubt it. We loved Frank Spencer (Michael Crawford), who was married to long-suffering Betty (Michele Dotrice), and who couldn’t put a foot right. Everything he touches falls to pieces

‘Ooh, Betty. The cat’s done a whoopsie in my beret.’ Was there any playground that didn’t ring with that in the Seventies? I doubt it. We loved Frank Spencer (Michael Crawford), who was married to long-suffering Betty (Michele Dotrice), and who couldn’t put a foot right. Everything he touches falls to pieces