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Reviews
Please Sir! (1968)
Terrific, at least initially
As an exemplar of ensemble sitcom Please,Sir! would be very hard to beat. The first two series certainly contained both scripts and performances that would put much else to shame.Anyone who has been through the English state school system in the last 50 years would recognise most of the character types and this realism certainly added to the charm. John Alderton was well cast as the young idealist but arguably overshadowed by the simply peerless Joan Sanderson as frosty deputy head Miss Ewell and the great Derek Guyler as the war obsessed caretaker,and every school that I ever attended had a miserable physics teacher , pens in breast pocket, who openly hated teaching as presented here by Richard Price. The pupils were an almost equally solid troupe- although quite visibly 10 years too old for the roles - and over all it just worked superbly well. Sadly , like most sitcoms, it outstayed it's welcome and by the final series was almost unrecognisable with a changed cast and weaker, sometimes repeating, scripts but for the first two series this was as good as it got and even stands up well to nostalgic viewing nearly fifty years later. Great stuff
Land of Hope and Gloria (1992)
Awful sitcom, real stinker
Destined to be forever billed as 'former Three Degrees singer ' Sheila Ferguson had hoped that Land of Hope and Gloria would be her springboard into a new career in TV. Sadly, rather than begin such a career it effectively strangled it at birth. A none-too-subtle knock off of To The Manor Born [ but with none of the wit, charm or subtlety ] the plot was an ' old money' family of crusty Brits needing to find some way to supplement income. Using one of those new- fangled PR/marketing types was supposed to open the door for some culture clash comedy especially when said newcomer turned out to be not just a woman but an American and - wait for it !!- a black American at that. Wow. Hilarious,eh? If the concept was weak, and the scripts even more so then the real death knell was the casting of Ferguson in the key role [ the 'Gloria' of the title]. She was, visibly, way out of her depth in trying to carry a series.Attempts to ham up in order to compensate for her lack of acting ability simply amplified the problem and one sequence in which she had to wear shades and talk in scripted 'street jive' was toe-curlingly embarrassing as well as questionably racist.Perhaps the saddest feature of all was the frail appearance of comedy legend Joan Sanderson in what turned out to be her last role. She, at least, deserved a so much better swansong. 6 episodes were about 5 and three-quarters too many and although Sanderson's death was the official reason for the series to be quietly dropped it felt much more like a convenient face-saver. Ferguson has subsequently concentrated on stage musicals as a much more appropriate vehicle,LOHAG being her one and only TV lead. Hardly anyone remembers the series these days,which is perhaps for the best.
Feet First (1979)
Seventies sit-com. hardly a classic
The genre of 'how-did-it-ever-make-it-onto-screen' seventies sit-coms is a fairly extensive one and 'Feet First' is a prime example. Ostensibly the plot concerns young,naiive amateur footballer Terry Prince being signed up for fame and fortune by slightly rogueish first division manager Harry Turnbull.Like most such series,though, the plot is only really a thin device around which to crowbar in all the standard sit-com clichés and routines. Football fans will have been particularly critical of the shoddy representation of all aspects of the game , although,in fairness, the two lead characters were far from the worst examples of football representation on the small screen. Indeed the performances of Lee Montague as Turnbull and Jonathon Barlow as Prince were probably as good as could be expected,given the lazy,uninspired quality of the scripts. Montague was already a well established stock player,called upon whenever a Cockney heavy was required,and the failure of Feet First didn't seem to harm his appeal particularly. Likewise the relative newcomer Barlow,who quickly settled in to a career of regular TV work in light,supporting roles. Sadly the same cannot be said of Jacqui Cassidy who,after appearing as Prince's predictably dim wife Viv,seems to have disappeared without trace as,indeed,did Feet First,pulled after 6 episodes leaving episode 7 unscreened and,frankly,unmissed.
Our Kid (1973)
Laughter-free 70's Sit-Com
Struggling writers in the 1970's must have been on the verge of despair at times. Whilst continuously failing to sell their own ideas they also had to watch in horror - as did the viewers - as a succession of short-lived and woefully unfunny sit-coms somehow made it to the screen. One such was 'Our Kid' of which,mercifully, only 6 episodes were ever screened. The setting was a typically clichéd sleepy Yorkshire village where two adult brothers still lived in the same tiny house that they had once shared with their parents.The rather older of the two presents as being bitter and frustrated that he has had to waste his life caring for his slightly gormless younger sibling. If this doesn't strike you as a hugely amusing premise then you would not be wrong; it wasn't! In episode 1 Older Brother bemoans the support that he has given to Younger Brother;
OB; 'There was your education to pay for' YB; 'But I went to State school' OB; 'School meals!!' YB; 'But I came home for dinner' OB; 'Well......spam fritters don't grow on trees,you know!!'
And that was really about as good as it ever got. There was an equally predictable attempt to introduce Older Brothers unrequited love interest but the impression was very much that nobody involved was really putting much effort into a series in which they had no great confidence. The 13 week standard run perhaps suggests that there may be 7 episodes of 'Our Kid'that have never been seen. We can but hope that they stay that way