Come Back Mrs. Noah

I was only 8 when this was originally aired and it passed me by completely, but on a recent trawl through sitcoms and comedy shows of my youth I gave this a watch and was pleasantly surprised.

Mollie Sugden is hilarious as Mrs. Noah, a Northern housewife stranded in orbit on board a space station. It won't appeal to everyone, it's very much of its time with its slapstick and bawdy, seaside postcard humour but I was raised on this kind of comedy and it ticked all the right boxes for me. The special effects are hilariously awful, adding to the comedy. They obviously knew this would be the case with their budget and the shows premise and leaned hard into it, and it works a treat. Highlights are a huge robotic chicken and space suits with breathing tubes that contain ping pong balls.

The rest of the cast all deliver but Joe Black as the put upon dogsbody Garstang is a particular joy.

This show might have only had six episodes but I found them to be hilarious. It's not often you find a comedy show set in space. Most shows in space are action adventure. What really made this a good show to watch was Mollie Sugden who portrayed Mrs. Slocombe in Are You Being Served?, as well as the constant innuendos that are played for laughs which I was able to get. This show could have lasted at least 2 or 3 seasons rather then just six episodes. Poor Mrs. Noah, how will you come back now? In the hearts and minds of those who will treasure this interstellar comedy show.

Agreed , COME BACK MRS NOAH is not a classic comedy ,in fact it's rather laughless but it's nowhere as bad as many people have made out and I certainly wouldn't put it in the same league as unfunny patronising crap like ALL ABOUT ME .

The problem lies with the format of a bunch of people being stranded aboard a space station and trying to rescue them . It should be pointed out that most of the humour comes from a special effect identical to the Ice Warrior death effect in DOCTOR WHO of peoples faces " shimmering " as they blast out of orbit . This happens in nearly every episode and wasn't very funny the first time it happened so goodness knows why the production team thought there was a lot of mileage from this . There's also a very formulaic idea of having a piece of technology take centre stage in every episode . For example there's a VR machine that Mrs Noah tries that has her believe she's at a wrestling match . If the budget had existed then we might have seen the title character sitting in a wrestling hall but we are talking BBC budget here which means the joke involves Mrs Noah in the space station shouting " Go on tear his arm off ! " . There's another episode featuring a computerised tea making machine . Come on how many laughs will that cause ? Not too many if you hadn't have guessed

So in space no one can hear you laugh because the ideas are severely limited and the casting doesn't help since Sugden will always be known as Mrs Slocombe , Ian Lavender will always be known as Private Pike while Hewlett and Knowles will always be known as the two snobbish officers from IT AIN'T HALF HOT MUM and you're instantly reminded of better things the cast have appeared in . As I said it's short on laughs but there seems to have been a bit of a bandwagon over the years making out this is the worst comedy the BBC has ever produced . Despite being unfunny and unsophisticated it's not that bad , it just had the misfortune to be produced during the golden age of BBC comedy

I read an article in 'Dreamwatch' magazine a good few years back which included the lines; "Science fiction and comedy are difficult to mix. For every 'Red Dwarf', there are about ten 'Come Back Mrs.Noahs'. At which point I fell on the floor laughing. "Come Back Mrs.Noah' wasn't intended to be science fiction comedy! I'm sure Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft would be the first to admit that.

The premise is this; Mollie Sugden plays 'Mrs.Gertrude Noah', a prize-winning housewife on a tour of a British space station ( ! ). Unfortunately, there's an accident and said station is blasted out of orbit, beginning a course that will take it out of the Solar System. Rescue is, for the moment, impossible. Also on board are two scientists played by Michael Knowles and Donald Hewlett, and Ian Lavender as a news reporter.

The humour is crude and coarse; for instance, when in the first episode Mrs.Noah becomes weightless, the ship's computer advises her to propel herself forward by means of expelling natural body gas. Farting, in other words. Instead she takes a bottle of perfume from her handbag and uses that to do the same. If 'Grace Brothers' had been a space station instead of a department store, this is what it would have been. But what do you expect from Lloyd and Croft?

There were also a number of scenes back on Earth with Tim Barrett as the harassed head of the British space exploration centre and Ann Michelle as his sexy assistant. Spoof news broadcasts read by Gorden Kaye prefaced each edition. Great comedy? Absolutely not! But its not as half as bad as F.Gwynplaine McIntyre makes out. I think we should be allowed to see it for ourselves so we can make up our own minds. Besides, after the fiasco of 'Hyperdrive', could anything possibly be worse?

'Come back Mrs Noah' is completely forgotten. I remembered this with the recent death of the comedy actress Molly Sugden. For years the only bit I could remember was the credit sequence with the cast dancing on a planets ring in gaudy colored space suits. Not all David Lloyd's comedies were a success but this was the worst. Memorable for being the worst too. An oddity to be remembered for that. Apart from the poor scripts the worst part of this series is the wasted talent. Gordon Kaye, Sugden and Michael Knowles and Donald Hewlett, and Ian Lavender from classic British comedies are in this and none seem to talk about this series. Ironically the cast play a crew trapped in some remote place unable to escape from there. That's how they probably feel about this. this series is in that category of worth seeing to see a car crash of great talent being wasted. See it once too believe that it was ever made. I give it 6 only for the acting talent in this.