Are You Being Served?

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.

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.

ARE YOU BEING SERVED? was a much-loved sitcom running throughout the Seventies and early Eighties that made a star out of John Inman and greatly enhanced the careers of established character actors such as Frank Thornton and Mollie Sugden. Basically a ragbag series of jokes and doubles entendres, it spawned a series of catchphrases including Inman's "I'm free!" and Sugden's numerous jokes about her pussy.

The series was part of a venerable tradition of camp comedy stretching back through the CARRY ON series of films back into the variety work of Max Miller. It was the product of a society constrained by Victorian tradition, wherein sexual matters were not to be discussed in public but only alluded to, chiefly through humorous means.

How times have changed. Camp comedy has been superseded by a much more overt strain of humor that might appear offensive to some but draws huge ratings. Comparing ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS or THE OFFICE with the less in-your-face style of ARE YOU BEING SERVED? is like trying to parallel chalk and cheese; each possesses their own comic style, the product of very different eras.

The passage of time has not been kind to ARE YOU BEING SERVED? In this "reboot" as the BBC likes to describe it, the well-loved characters are played by different actors: Roy Barraclough does a creditable stab at Arthur Borough's Mr. Grainger, while John Challis makes a passable Captain Peacock, even though his screen persona comes across as a lot less refined than Thornton's. Some of the other impersonations are just plain embarrassing; the less said about Sherrie Hewson's Mrs. Slocombe, and Justin Edwards's Mr. Rumbold, the better.

But perhaps the most embarrassing aspect of the whole enterprise is the script, written this time by Daren Litten. Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft's original efforts contained a fair share of bawdy humor, but there was always a certain innocence underneath, almost as if the characters did not quite understand the implications of what they were saying. Here the humor is defiantly in-your-face: each joke is telegraphed by the actors looking at one another and then at the camera, as if prompting us to erupt into gales of unrestrained laughter.

Some of the jokes are downright offensive, especially the references to "seamen" on deck, or Mr. Conway's (Kayode Ewumi's) efforts to prevent Captain Peacock from choking on a lobster bone by coming up behind him and maneuvering himself in a sequence which, to those not in the know, might seem like an homosexual act. When Mr. Grace (Mathew Horne) enters, this is precisely what he assumes. The studio audience erupt into paroxysms of mirth, but as they have been cackling away at almost anything during the previous twenty-six minutes, we might suspect that they are simply a laugh-track dubbed on to the final cut.

Produced to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the sitcom genre on television, we are clearly meant to approach this reboot with affectionate nostalgia. In truth, watching this farrago of nonsense makes one fear for its future; perhaps television needs to be led kicking and screaming out of the past into something more innovative, just like Mr. Grace wants to do to the much-loved store he owns.

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.

So I think they nailed the remake in terms of writing and set. What I think I found missing was some of the personalities lost in bad casting and/or acting. Mr Humphries seems to have lost his devilish, smarmy smile. That's a huge omission. I also think Humphries could act a little less gay but yet be obvious like Inman did. Mr Peacock I found to be somehow grumpier and less dapper than Thornton. Mrs Slocomb was just ok Miss Brahams as well - just ok Mr Grainger was spot on as well as Mr Rumbold, understanding it's hard to find that Nicolas Smith look The new, actual young Mr Grace could stand to make his annoying self less involved.