Picture from Wikipedia

All is well with the world, The Sunday Alternative is back with a vengeance. I had saved time by uploading it to the Internet Archive a few days ago and doing the blog too, so all I needed to do this morning was make the blog page go live and I was away. While I was doing the usual tagged tweets from the show's Twitter account (I only log in on a Sunday to do this, which could be why the follower count is a bit low) I was watching the listening figures and they were quite pleasing but still not as great as they were in the good old days of the podcast all those seven weeks ago. Hopefully I will be able to climb back out of the pit and claw back the audience as the podcast is surprisingly my most successful venture. The live gig in a couple of weeks will be a good way to get the name out to those who might not be aware of it yet, especially with the tie-in video series on YouTube, and I am currently working behind the scenes (and superstitiously not mentioning it too loud) to attempt to get a monthly night off the ground outside Nottingham. As much as I would like to do it in London somewhere I'm not sure if it would be something I could commit to so may need to think about somewhere nearer; Leeds or Sheffield perhaps to start with as they have a pretty healthy scene. A tiny part of me would also like to revive the radio version but only on the right terms.

Once I had got the ball rolling with the podcast we went for lunch at my dad's as usual. Once home I checked the figures and the podcast enjoyed a reasonably steady first day, still a little catching up to do with the usual numbers but enough to make me want to carry on doing it. We are nearly at the end of the complete Keeping Up Appearances box set so watched a few more episodes this evening. At first I was reluctant to watch it but as I reported at the time I soon got into it, based as it was on the writing style of traditional domestic sitcoms. The nearer we get to the end the more irritated by it I am becoming, although I don't feel as if I should stop watching it as I want to complete the set and draw a line under it. One of the major sources of annoyance is the character of Rose, Hyacinth Bucket's sister. Rose is a mini-skirted mutton dressed as lamb who always has some sort of relationship crisis to contend with, and her coping mechanism seems to be overacting on a pantomime scale that would make the cast of 'Allo 'Allo seem restrained. The improbable man-eater is a sitcom staple and Rose no doubt went to the same deportment school as Lilo Lill in Bread and Marina from Last of the Summer Wine. The character is too cartoonish even for a Whitehall farce like this. The other problem I have is the relationship between Hyacinth and Richard; she is bossy and patronising towards him and he has no choice but to play along and follow her rules, unable to escape from the daily misery that is his life. Perhaps it is too much like my own experience of marriage for me to really enjoy it. 

The Sunday Alternative Podcast #43 (Saturday edition) is available from here.

The Sunday Alternative Podcast #44 is available from here.

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June housekeeping

The audio book of Bowie Day (a short story inspired by A Christmas Carol) will be released on August 31st. In the meantime the book can be downloaded to your Kindle from here.

All donations made using the PayPal button will go towards making podcasts, comedy sketches, live video sessions, documentaries, short films and more that will be made available online for free.

The Sunday Alternative bag and t-shirt (and other products) can be purchased from my shop page. All money raised will go into the fund to create free content.

steveEoliver@gmail.com

@SteveOliver76

As I said in the 'My Perfect Weekend' feature in the paper a few weeks ago, I am a fan of naff situation comedies from the 1970s and 1980s. As cheesy and dubious of content Are You Being Served may seem these days, it does have flashes of brilliance although it is obviously somewhat dated now. As David Baddiel said on stage, at the time, Mrs Slocombe's pussy was meant as a reference to her cat with a slight undercurrent of vagina. Nowadays language has changed sufficiently for 'pussy' to mean vagina with a slight undercurrent of cat.

There's quite a large amount of work in David Croft and his writing partners Jeremy Lloyd and Jimmy Perry, that doesn't sit well with today's televisual sensitivity on the boundaries of taste and acceptability. John Inman's portrayal of Mr Humphreys was seen as offensive and homophobic, at a time when John Inman himself was publicly married to a woman for appearances sake. Similarly, the content of It Ain't Half Hot Mum ensures that mainstream repeats are very thin on the ground, usually reserved for clips shows laughing at how terribly racist and sexist sitcom was in the days of yore.

Allo Allo was inexplicably a massive hit in the 1980s, and with a decade worth of cod accents and hilariously camp Germans lasting from 1982 to 1992, it went on for four years longer than the actual Second World War of its setting. It probably caused just as much suffering too.

The repertory company of Jeffrey Holland, Su Pollard and Paul Shane provided my personal favourite from the pen of David Croft, along with Jimmy Perry. Before Oh, Doctor Beeching, and You Rang M'Lord there was Hi-De-Hi. Set in a fictional holiday camp in the 1950s, Hi-De-Hi ran for eight years and managed to constantly stay on top. These days, writers tend to stick (at least in this country) to a two series rule, but if something can be stretched, then why not keep going. I even used to video and keep Hi-De-Hi and watch them over and over. When I was in my early teens, I toyed with the idea of applying to be a Butlins Redcoat, imagining it to be exactly the working life of the Maplins Yellow Coats. I soon got over this phase when I realised that life did not imitate art on this occasion, and that being a Redcoat wasn't too different from being in the army, or prison.

So far, this blog may seem a rather critical and negative thing to write on the day of David Croft's death. Watching old sitcoms retrospectively can be quite uncomfortable, given that certain areas were acceptable once such as mockery of ethnicity or portraying women as either sexy 'crumpet' or battle axe mothers-in-law. It is still funny to watch, if only to squirm at the off-colour (no pun intended) lines. I've previously mentioned my enjoyment of On The Buses for example, a comedy based on the suspension of belief that Reg Varney and Bob Grant were sexually attractive to women in their twenties.

As David Croft's comedy was based on nostalgia, it cannot really be seen as dated, (dubious 1970s content excepting) as it presents itself as a period piece. Hi-De-Hi in the 1950s, You Rang M'Lord in the 1920s, both come across as fairly historically accurate, (due to the whole of Croft's canon being based on some aspect of life or family experience), so doesn't carry the big collar and flares retro silliness that dates a programme, (with the exception of Are You Being Served of course). Which brings me to what in my opinion is the best of David Croft's work: Dad's Army.

Set during the Second World War, and like Allo Allo going on for longer than the actual event, this is a work of genius that is regularly repeated on the BBC rather than being unfairly shunted away on GOLD or Watch. The episodes have the ability to reveal something new to the viewer on every occasion. Arthur Lowe and John Le Mesurier were the perfect foils for each other as the pompous social climbing wannabe and the upper class, well connected gentleman who isn't allowed to forget who outranks him. With only a small handful of cast members still with us, the chances of a reunion special aren't too clever, but I'm sure the convention circuit provides a small income.

David Croft is one of the last of the great situation comedy writers, a dying breed who's influence is still seen today. Okay so the "Don't tell him Pike" bit has fallen into a hackneyed, overplayed clip show sketch, along with Del Boy falling through the bar and Basil Fawlty hitting his car with a branch, but Dad's Army is one of history's greatest comedies and for that we can forgive the crass lack of subtlety in other works.