The Riff Raff Element

Only two previous reviews - no wonder there's no video or DVD. It was a great little series, and I can't understand why it has never been repeated. One of my favourite bits was the over-zealous North-American secretary (Pippa Guard?) who experienced the immaculate conception, which turned out to be a cushion! I do recall it was screened quite late, and for a first showing, must have attracted a fairly small audience.

This is a gem of a series with interesting plots and sub-plots - the parallel families with their intertwining stories. As one of the other two reviewers has said, this series has dimmed in the memory over the years, but was a worthy piece of tragi-comic drama, and is certainly worthy of a second showing.

...as Ronald Pickup would have said to his hapless son. In this case it's directed at those losers at the Beeb. Get your fingers out, for goodness sake! Put The Riff Raff Element out on DVD! When you look at the stuff they do put out, it's hard to understand. For instance, I see from Amazon that the Beeb has put out Series 6 of Bergerac this week. You'd think they could spare us that for a month or two (it's always on satellite anyway) and put this wonderful series out instead. It's really hard spinning this comment out to ten lines because of IMDb's rules - I've said all I want to say really, and now I'm just waffling to get the length up. I hope readers will forgive me!

I adored this series back in the 90s, and like others here have lamented the fact that no dvd was available - well I have just ordered the dvd of both series on amazon, and am very excited about the thought of watching it again. I hope it's as good as I remember it to be. Perfect casting, Greg Wise was my favourite character as Alister. It deserves to be better known.

This series was representative of some of the best that the BBC offered in the mid-1990s. Ronald Pickup is fantastic in his role as the titular head of the family, and a great comic foil for the rest of the cast. Celia Imrie has gone on to other things (hurrah for Acorn Antiques!), and some of the unsung heroes of British telly were all involved.

So why have I never seen this repeated on TV, or for sale on video/DVD? I have only my own (very warm) memories of the programme, and would love to re-live those memories - I just hope that it hasn't fallen victim to the BBC's unexplained policy of simply deleting some programmes from its records.

BBC - Let me pay you to buy it...!!

I agree with (almost) everything the only other person to have bothered to put fingertips to keyboard has said about this comedy/drama show. I remember raving about it to my family and friends and the old bloke next door at the time but, alas, have yet to encounter another fellow viewer yet alone fan. With the passing of time - and no repeats - my memory has dimmed and I have trouble recalling the plot let alone the names of the characters/actors. Greg Wise was too nice to be true - which is possibly why I started fancying him and followed his career with interest, until he found happiness and bliss with Emma, sigh - and I was shocked by his sudden demise in the show. Don't get me wrong, the other characters were well-written but Greg's role was pivotal: the sexual tension of his character's relationship with Pet was central to the whole drama. The whole series fizzled out after his departure and I gave up hope of a third series and some sort of "closure" when he never reappeared (I don't know why but I always thought/hoped he would).

Anyway the show was darned good and surely merited a decent ending and a re-run.