Are You Being Served?

As an avid viewer of the original series, I remained open minded. The original cast members would be had to duplicate, they were so in sync with each other. John Inman as Mr. Humphries and Molly Sudgen as Mrs. Slocomb are memorable characters. I continued to watch them on "Grace and Favor", so I think I am qualified to offer my opinion. I think the cast choices were good. I feel the new Mr. Humphries is a bit more flamboyant, but I like him. The choice of adding Mr. Conway and a younger Mr. Grace will definitely add a new twist and a bit of flavor. Having said that, after watching the first episode, I want to know where we are going. So bring on more episodes.

Like many people I was sceptical about the BBC remaking old sitcoms like this, especially 'Are you being served?' which is so beloved by so many.

To be fair, this episode (which felt very much like a pilot for a new series) wasn't bad. There were laughs, lots of them, and some decent impersonations of the original characters being given by the new cast. I felt that the actors playing Mr Rumbold and Mr Grainger (yes, we'll scoot over the fact that he retired in the original show) in particular did a good job.

Derren Litten has obviously decided which elements of the history of the show he is going to use/ignore and this meant nice remarks about the 1977 big screen version of the show and Mr Lucas.

It wasn't perfect (the scenes with Matthew Horne) but if I was the Head of Comedy at the BBC i'd push ahead with a full series.

Why can't anyone just leave the classics alone? You can't copy them, you can't replace them, you can't.....you can't.....you can't!!!

Although there were SOME funny bits in there, it wasn't the same.

It would have been better to have it modern day, with all new characters.

I'm so sick and tired of classics getting dragged through the mud and corporate greed!

Out of all the billions of books out there, with billions of stories, and billions of scenarios.............movie and show makers just can't stop degrading the classics!

I wanted to give this a chance as I have loved "are you being served?" ever since I first ran across it on PBS. However, the new actors have completely butchered the characters. I find them irritating, off putting, and bland. It's just not funny, the jokes feel forced. It's actually worse than the movie they made that I made the mistake of buying off of iTunes.

Initially I was confused as to why the characters were talking about Jimmy Connors and Simple Minds until it was stated that the series is set in 1988.

I thought it was a reboot with new actors playing the role of the familiar characters from Are You Being Served. Its final series was broadcast in 1985. In fact this is a more smuttier continuation from the original series. They even reference the holiday to Spain in 1977 and Mr Lucas.

This was a one off as part of the BBC's classic sitcom revival season although I expected this would be commissioned as a full series. Simply I laughed out loud a few times as well as chuckled regularly as the episode went on.

It is a little bit cruder than the original series which had its own share of innuendo laden humour. Mrs Slocombe went overboard with her pussy comments and there was the interaction between Miss Croft and Mr Rumbold which was straight from a Carry On film.

Of course the main interest is to see how well the new cast do with the roles. John Challis was good as Captain Peacock, Justin Edwards looked like a man with a bald wig as Mr Rumbold. Of course the hardest part goes to Jason Watkins who steps into his mother's shoes in this episode but also has to fill John Inman's.

I met John Inman several times in the Isle of Man when he used to tour with his saucy seaside summer season farces. So I am likely to be biased. Inman's Mr Humphries was more a mummy's boy maybe to reflect a time when homosexuality on television was not deemed to be as acceptable as it is today.

Watkin's Humphries is probably more outwardly camp than Inman's. Watkins also got the biggest audience cheer when he said 'I'm free.'

The one big change is Matthew Horne playing a genuinely young Mr Grace, a yuppie who plans to drag the department store into a modern era. This means trying to get rid off the older staff and bringing some new technology. He even gives Mr Rumbold an Amstrad computer.

I did notice one thing that bridged the gap between both versions of Are You Being Served. John Inman and Roy Barraclough both came from Preston.