Are you ready for a cross between Festen and Mrs Brown’s Boys? This is the weirdest contribution to the Landmark Sitcom Season yet. BBC4 has recreated a lost episode of the 1960s Alf Garnett sitcom Till Death Us Do Part using Johnny Speight’s surviving script. And as they say on the internet, when you watch it your jaw will hit the floor.
I don’t know if this is how the series was broadcast went out originally but the thirty minute episode is presented more like a play from the opening Mrs Brown’s Boys-style shot of the audience the the final bow. The studio scenes take place in a lounge, kitchen and street which are interlinked by transparent walls as if the makers have decided to adhere to the film-making techniques of the Dogme movement.
But never mind the set up, what about the script? The episode, A Woman’s Place Is In The Home, finds unreconstructed chauvinist Alf, played by Simon Day, raging against the world because his dinner is burnt, the fire has gone out and everybody else has ordered fish and chips without getting him any. It is so hackneyed I’m surprised it isn’t called A Woman’s Plaice Is In The Home.
The best way to enjoy it is to watch it as a period piece, a curiosity evoking a lost era. The Garnetts don’t have a phone in their Wapping terraced house so a lot of the action takes place outside where Alf tries to use a public phone box - remember them? - but suddenly everybody else wants to use it too. Day’s Garnett gets increasingly irate and loud which is pretty good going as he started of pretty irate and loud in the very first scene, wasting no time in coming out with the obligatory catchphrases “Innit marvellous” and “silly moo”.
On the plus side it’s not particularly sexist because at the end of the day it is clearly Alf who is the fall guy and idiot, blaming everything that goes wrong on the Labour Government. Good support from Lizzie Roper as his wife Else, Sydney Rae White as daughter Rita and Carl Au as boyfriend Mike. It’s a nice slice of social history certainly, but despite the best efforts of the cast in terms of comedy it does feel horribly dated. Maybe that's part of the point. Innit marvellous? Not exactly.
Sept 1, 9pm, BBC4.
