Are You Being Served? (TV Series) German Week (1975) User Reviews

Political correctness?? Not a hint of it

[Sleepin_Dragon · 9/10 · 28 August 2016]

Grace Brothers opt to sell only German goods for a week, naturally it's not a huge success, it kicks off badly when the first customers are Germans. To help sales Captain Peacock comes up with a few ideas

It's a hugely funny and well remembered episode, some fiendishly funny lines, when Mrs Slocombe is made to stay late for a meeting and replies 'you know, this sort of thing just isn't fair on my pussy,' the look on Wendy's face is a treat, a definite giggler, she can't help but smirk. The best lines generally belong to Mrs Slocombe in this episode, her drunken scenes are hilarious.

Thankfully there wasn't a hint of political correctness back in the seventies, and bawdy comedies like this could be made, very definitely British humour. I think the fun they had making it is very evident 9/10

German Week

[studioAT · 9/10 · 6 September 2020]

A really fun episode of the show, in which Grace Brothers decides to forget the past, and engage in a 'German Week'.

Bawdy, un PC and outright silly, this remains enormous fun, and is a great example of the song and dance episodes that the show did so well.

My only negative point is that it ends rather abruptly, but other than that this is great.

AnAmazing Study In the Harm and Clichéd Expectations of Political Correctness

[richard.fuller1 · 10/10 · 9 December 2006]

By the time of this episode, the US of A wasn't even subjected to the harm of political correctness.

Having all the AYBS episodes recorded, and not overly opposed to pc-ness, just find it irrelevant, I decided on day to watch this very episode and listen to what was said, as I knew England in the 1970s would definitely take a different approach to German stereotyping and referring to the war, by comparison to American shows from that time, or in the 1960s, there was virtually no mention of WWII on Donna Reed, Leave It To Beaver, Happy Days even.

About the closest I can think of off the top of my head is on Gilligan's Island, and that was a Japanese soldier (played by an Italian Vitto Scotti).

So I watched 'German Week' to, at best, hear the German slander I knew these English people would surely utter.

Surprise.

Aside from a few quips at the language (which ten times out of ten, the joke was on the British character's snobbery or failure to understand the German dialect) and Mr. Grainger complaining about the 'damn German word for socks', the show explodes into yet another tirade on these English citizens themselves.

Who needs to make fun of others? "I haven't forgotten being flung flat on me back in Something Garden, and it was the German air force that was responsible!" "And every other time she was flat on her back, it was the American air force that was responsible." Thank you, Mollie Sugden and Trevor Bannister.

Meryl Streep couldn't say the lines that Mollie Sugden did with the same earnest style.