Ein Mann im Haus

Now the series is 30 years old but it is still funny. I saw it when I was a child and I can still recall the laughters at home. It was the first British tv series thet topped the tv rankings in Spain. And even now, people remember it. Two different situations: upstairs the 3 flat mates, and downstairs the landlord and his wife. The scripts were terrific: both situations fixed perfectly. And what about the actors? all of them were absolutely brilliant, specially my dear Mrs Roper. Oh, yes. Americans made a "remake" that was OK when they copied word by word the original episodes. When they had to create new scripts it became awful and boring. By the way, I always recommend to see any show in its original version, but I must confess that Spanish dubbed version is as good as the original one.

I absolutely LOVED this show when it aired here, even though I was a little kid by then. It had the kind of charm and mood that keeps you laughing until it hurts, the cast was excellent and so was the timing. If compared to what the sitcom genre has degenerated to (And I don't think it's necessary to name any specific title, most of the sitcoms are awful except Seinfeld) it's a crying shame that shows like Mad About The House are no longer made. Whatever happened to witty writing and great cast?

What you've got now in any sitcom is a cast full of supposedly cute girls who look like they just got out of a concentration camp, plus they can't act. And male cast is not much better, either. It seems any sitcom actor/actress must come out of a models' agency, as if the 'beauty' actually mattered more than the acting skills.

Somebody may accuse me of nostalgia, and I'm willing to be called that if it means yearning for good and funny shows like Mad About The House. The current sitcoms really stink. And I am looking forward to be able to get this fantastic show on DVD someday. By the way, The Roper was awesome as well.

10/10.

The one thing the Brits know about television is knowing when to stop. This show did more with 39 episodes (& one movie) than Three's Company did with 172 episodes. While it does leave you wanting for more, I'd rather have a few excellent shows than dozens of mediocre or downright horrible ones. Hollywood should take a lesson here.

Richard was a likable bloke and the girls were cute and charming. The Ropers were much funnier than their American counterparts. I liked the fact that they dismissed the whole "Robin is gay" thing almost immediately.

If you've never seen this show, you owe to yourself to check it out.

This programme started to be hard to see in this particular TV market once the American imitation "Three's Company" (1977) started up. "Three's Company" was everything "Man About the House" was not. The British original was funny, sexy, maybe a bit salacious. And it had two cute girls, nice English ones. The grossly inferior "Three's Company" was unfunny, prurient rather than sexy, and basically brain-dead. And no cute English birds, obviously.

"Man About the House" had a proper star, Richard O'Sullivan, who'd just finished his stint as Bingham in "Doctor in the House", a *completely* different role, mind you. Rather than someone like O'Sullivan, "Three's Company" had John Ritter. Years later, it turned out that Ritter could act but that wasn't really apparent in the '70's when he gave the leading one-note performance.

Hack US magazine writers still trot out that tired old cliché about the British being prudish about sex when compared to sophisticated Americans. I've seen a couple of references of that kind in the past month. Well, that might very well have been true in the 1940's, but that was certainly not the case by the '60's, and it's not true today either. If one compares these two series from the 1970's, it's the British one that's mature, while the American copycat seems childish and leering.

I suspect anyone who had ever seen "Man About the House" was left grinding his teeth by "Three's Company" and its long and entirely undeserved run. Surely there's an all-Britcom channel somewhere where this coy ménage à trois can find a happy home again.

I found the first four episodes of MAN ABOUT THE HOUSE, and I'm scouring eBay and Amazon for more! This show is pretty damn funny. I never liked the American version, and now I know why. The acting in this is far superior! Richard O'Sullivan is funny without resorting to inane slapstick -- ok, there's a bit of it, but the British do it so much better (as evidenced by Benny Hill). Sally Thomsett is cute without being dumb, and shows her wit time and time again. And Paula Wilcox combines sexy, smart, and sassy like no one I've ever seen. You won't find a more talented trio.

Yootha Joyce and Brian Murphy are the -- dare I say -- threesome's perfect foils. Not the lecherous landlords of the American version, but naughty and enjoyable.

Would love to see this on TV on this side of the pond. As it is, I'll have to buy PAL and have it converted to NTSC. A small price to pay for superior, saucy, sexy fun!