Bread

I mildly remember this as a pre-teen in the early 90's; I guess I'd sit though it habitually (as you did !) and was too young to understand the socio-cultural setting and subsequent humour to reflect Scousers in Thatcher's Britain. I bought this from CEX a couple of days ago; the 1st time I've seen it in about 30 years ! Oh the nostalgia !

The humour is moderately funny - if a tad mediocre. Sure, the squalor and hardships of a struggling large working-class Catholic family all living in a small terraced house on a Liverpool hill street is all summarized through good old English comedy; sure, this show probably helped the '1 in 10' in Thatcher's Britain to laugh off everyday hardships and deprivation !

The most memorable thing about this show has to be that catchy, vibrant, totally kitsch and completely classic theme tune, supposedly sung by the main cast. (it's the 1 thing I do remember of this show back in the day !)

All in all, I'll give it a fair 7/10 for being (moderately) funny, a good satirical send-up of the decade and of course the brilliant theme tune !

Set in Liverpool in the 198o's at the time of high unemployment, Thatcherism and the miner strikes, through to the 1990's. The Boswell household was run by matriarch Nelly, a strict Roman Catholic family and Nelly always found salvation in the Church. Every mealtime she passed round a china hen in which they all put money. Sometimes we got to see Freddy, Nellie's ex-husband, who lives in a caravan with his girlfriend Lilo Lil, a big chested Irish woman with flame red hair, short skirts and a little fur jacket and high heel shoes and an equal fiery temperament to match.

Every episode had some crisis which the whole family would resolve around the dinner table, and a prayer or two would be said.

Money matters would be solved by going to the local DSS office, where they were met by the fiery, ice hearted DSS lady. The family claimed every single penny they were entitled and more if they could. And they worked on the side too to bring in extra cash

"Bread" follows the lives of a close-knit family in 1980s Liverpool. We see their trials and tribulations, their daily battle with an outside world of crime, poverty, unemployment and immorality. Using their wits, the Boswells beat this world at its own game, exploiting every loophole in the welfare system to cheat the bureaucrats of the DHSS.

Nellie Boswell and her five grownup children (Joey, Jack, Adrian, Aveline and Billy) are fiercely loyal to one another. When one has a problem everyone else comes to the rescue, traveling in a convoy of cars, ranging from Joey's black Jaguar to Billy's clapped out old mini. You always see them walk closely together at the same pace, staring straight ahead. The charming, leather-clad Joey was always the first to speak, usually beginning with the word: "Greetings!" Not every episode had a happy ending, however.

When I first saw this programme I was still in primary school. It used to be shown on the ABC every Monday night at 8.00 PM. I liked it when it first started. 1986-1988 was the heyday of the show. But after a while it didn't seem so fresh. The show dragged on into the early nineties, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The mobile phones were still huge, though. They changed the actors who played Joey and Aveline, although I found the original Aveline's accent a bit annoying. The show seemed to have lost its sparkle.

When the last episode finished in 1991 we saw the camera draw away from the Boswell house in Kelsall Street (which looked identical to the surrounding streets), getting an aerial view of Liverpool at large, finishing with a shot of that old cathedral. And there it finally closed.

A sitcom from my childhood that my mother absolutely loved, as did most of my schoolfriends, but as a twelve-year-old fan of Monty Python and Fawlty Towers, I couldn't for the life of me understand what all the fuss was about. The show revolved around a supposedly penniless Liverpudlian family, all of whom had their own annoying and oft-repeated catchphrases, and to this day I can't believe how much the audience used to roar with laughter at "She is a tart!" and "All the colours of the rainbow, son". Written by Carla Lane, famous for being paid large sums of money for making nobody laugh (see also BUTTERFLIES and THE LIVER BIRDS), and featuring audience-grabbing but embarrassing cameos from the likes of Paul and Linda McCartney whilst shamelessly playing on every chirpy Scouser stereotype in the book - hey, we're all natural comedians, poets and lovable rogues, don't you know! - this series was a nightmare from start to finish and dragged on far too long. Carla Lane somewhat unrealistically blamed the show's declining popularity on "disloyal ratbag fans" rather than her own tissue-thin scripts and the atrocious, stilted performances from all concerned.

In it's heydey Bread was a decent comedy about the Boswell family-a Catholic family living in Liverpool. Nellie Boswell held the largely unemployed family together during the series as they got up to all sorts.

Living down the road from the Boswells was Granddad who was an irascible old man who kept bothering them every five minutes. He added to the humour.

The only problem was that Bread ran longer than it should have. A lot of comedy shows outstay their welcome and Bread was one of them. It ran until the early 1990's but by that time most people-including myself-were fed up with it. Comedy shows should only have a limited run and Bread chose to go on for longer than it should have.

But in all fairness, the early episodes were very funny and do deserve a look.