So You Think You've Got Troubles

There's an old Belfast joke involving a Hindu looking for a job which I won't repeat, but basically this woeful series is that joke expanded and with Jews replacing Hindus. It's hard to believe it was made to be honest it is so bad. I'm only giving it three stars because people I know including my own brother turned up in the series as extras. "Foreign Bodies" from the BBC was much better and deserves a repeat showing sometimesometime, this is best forgotten.

Warren Mitchell is one of mine! Or should I say he was brought up in North London and he went to the other good school in the borough, Southgate County. He is not the uneducated oaff, Alf Garnett, but a grammar school boy of a more Jewish origin than me.

So strangely in So You Think You've Got Troubles, Warren Mitchell was playing someone closer to his real self than any of his other roles.

I'm certain the BBC was worried about it and they only ever showed this excellent series once and then late at night. It probably got closer to the truth in Ulster than anything else at the time. Warren's musings on the nature of a God that had left him a widower were quite profound.

A few years ago, I spoke to one of the writer's on a BBC phone-in and said how much I'd liked the series. He said that he'd thought it was one of their best and I got the impression that he thought the BBC had done it less than justice.

If you ever get a chance to see the series, then do!