From the days when "Artistic freedom" was more than just a meaningless phrase,"Are you being served" is deliciously low,grubby,cheap and very,very funny.It is of course a farce - a genre that is often attempted but seldom with as much success.First-rate comic actors do their familiar schtick,much-loved characters expand very satisfactorily to the big screen ,and,thirty years ago,moviegoers left the theatres with aching sides.How can that be a bad thing? Now we are living in a much more liberal society and are not allowed to laugh at anything that "They" don't think is funny and several po-faced Guardian readers appear to issue weekly dictats about what we watch on TV where sex of all persuasions is prevalent but we're not permitted to make jokes about it ,appalling violence is wrought 24/7 in our front rooms because it is "street" and we are "bourgeois" to complain about it,and language that would make a bargee blush is spouted by "stand up" comedians while their "sophisticated" audience, doubtless comprising of the rest of the readers of The Guardian,roll about in the aisles. Compared to all this,"are you being served" is,as those avatars of Englishness Mr Gilbert and Mr Sullivan once said,"a source of innocent merriment". Messrs Thornton,Inman,Bannister,mesdames Sugden and Richards,I salute you.In a world of fuel crises,Arthur Scargill,England failing to reach the World Cup finals and Scotland succeeding,the Sex Pistols and the Silver Jubilee.....you made me laugh like a drain.
Review of Are You Being Served?
