A version of this article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 3 September 2016.
Are You Being Served?:
Sunday, BBC One
Porridge: Sunday, BBC One
Young Hyacinth: Friday, BBC One
The
BBC’s Landmark Sitcom season is, officially, a celebration of its redoubtable
sitcom legacy. Chief among its offerings are revivals of old favourites such as
Are You Being Served?, Porridge and Keeping Up Appearances.
Though
billed as one-offs, they’ll almost certainly be recommissioned if viewers
approve. The success of Still Open All
Hours, which began as a Christmas special, proves that.
Naturally,
this has led to accusations that the BBC is trading on former glories when it
should be supporting original comedy. Well, yes. To a degree. But that j’accuse
conveniently ignores the plentiful sitcom pilots which also form part of the
season.
But
let’s focus on the reheated oldies. Everyone else is. Are You Being Served? was never a classic anyway, but the revival captured
its bawdy spirit. Set three years after the original ended, it’s officially a
sequel, albeit with different actors in situ. The original cast, of course,
have all taken that escalator to the great shop floor in the sky.
Its
torrent of camp innuendo was occasionally tinged with a coarser 21st
century edge. For all its blatant rudeness, the original wouldn’t have stooped
to gags about “seamen” and “taking Mr Humphries up the Regal”. But you’d have
to be righteously po-faced to resist smirking at such knowingly contrived tosh.
Mr
Humphries may be an outdated gay stereotype, but there’s still no malice in the
way he’s written and performed. Jason Watkins had a ball (ooh, pardon!) in the
late John Inman’s fleet-footed shoes, although his performance took a harsher approach. Sheree Hewson was equally enjoyable as Mollie Sugden’s Mrs
Slocombe, purple rinse, pussy and all.
Good,
breezy fun as a one-off tribute, but the novelty won’t last if it becomes a
series. Where can they go from here?
Another
sequel, Porridge had a more
difficult mountain to climb. After all, the original is one of the greatest
British sitcoms ever made. Alas, despite being written by its sainted creators
Dick Clement and Ian La Franais, it was curiously listless.
Kevin
Bishop did a decent job as Fletch’s cyber-criminal grandson, although his best
moments involved physical comedy rather than dialogue.
His
personality is basically identical to Fletch’s, which just made me miss Ronnie
Barker even more. Clement and La Franais haven’t forgotten how to write Fletch,
at least in terms of nailing his cheerfully sarcastic speech patterns. But the
gags were tired and threadbare, the stabs at modernity dutifully forced. It
felt like a mechanical lecture from veteran scientists with nothing left to
prove.
Not
a disaster by any means, but utterly pointless
A
1950s-set prequel to Keeping Up
Appearances, Young Hyacinth was
– remarkably – the best of the bunch.
The
only good thing about the shrill, tiresome original was Patricia Routledge’s
performance as the appallingly snobbish Hyacinth Bucket, but the brilliant Kerry
Howard echoed her mannerisms with startling accuracy. However, it was more than
mere mimicry. She played a character, not a UK Gold repeat.
Roy
Clarke, that prolific veteran of gentle teatime comedy, clearly enjoyed delving
into the past of one of his few memorable creations. A wry character piece shot
on film, it was far more charming than the original. Some of Clarke’s dialogue
was even reminiscent of Alan Bennett, if only in terms of cadence and rhythm.
Key
to its modest success was Hyacinth as a desperately class-climbing young woman,
which carries far more pathos than the middle-aged monster she became.
We’ll
probably see more of Young Hyacinth,
which means that Clarke, who also writes Still
Open All Hours, is still a popular sitcom writer at the age of 86. I can
take or leave his work, but I bow to his incredible longevity.
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