When Your Local PBS Station Was The Home of Classic TV Part 2

The Britcom Edition!

Thames Television Logo circa 1970

In my previous article about my local PBS station, I talked about the old reruns it used to air when I was growing up in the 70s. There were only a handful of American shows like Dark Shadows and Star Trek, but the big thing with PBS was its British offerings. Dramatic, cultured, and award-winning shows like Masterpiece Theatre and The Six Wives of Henry VIII were one thing. The other — and the thing I cared more about — was the numerous sitcoms from across the pond I could find on my PBS channel. Britcoms, as we Americans like to call them, were all over both local PBS channels I got through cable. Today we have Britbox, a streaming service that provides both old and new British television to subscribers in the U.S., but while it has some of the big classics like Fawlty Towers and Blackadder, I remember a few that were either more obscure or are now just too old to be seen as desirable viewing anymore. Maybe in the UK people can still find these shows somewhere, but over here the best you can do is maybe some clips on Youtube. And that’s a shame because some of the shows I watched back in the day were great.

In the interest of true nostalgia, I’m going to write about the shows I remember watching from memory without Googling or hitting up IMBd for information. My memory may be foggy (no pun intended), but it’s been years, even decades in some cases since I’ve seen a lot of these.

1. Father, Dear Father — The first British comedy show I ever saw. It was about a divorced man who had custody of his two teenage daughters. They had a housekeeper and a dog. The concept of a man having custody while the mom only dropped in to visit occasionally was odd enough, but a TV show family with a dog that didn’t just vanish with no explanation suddenly? Remarkable. I remember more sex jokes on this show than I was used to hearing on American TV, but it was tame compared to some other Britcoms I had yet to discover.
2. Butterflies — This starred Wendy Craig — I mention her name because I remember it and later saw her with Bette Davis in the creepy 60s horror drama The Nanny — as a middle-aged bored housewife and mother who wants to have an affair but just can’t bring herself to do it. The entire series focuses on her flirtation with a man she’s met who is most definitely interested in her. Her husband is dull, her teenage sons are slackers, and you really root for her and her “boyfriend”, but you don’t really want her to do it because if she did, she’d become the villain. The show is almost a comedy-drama, and it’s not my favorite, but it was interesting. My mom liked this one too.
3. No, Honestly — I don’t remember much about this one at all except the title, and the theme song. I can still hear it in my head. I think the couple who starred were married in real life. They would start and/or end the show out of character like George and Gracie. And she was a little daffy like Gracie. I’m completely blank on details of the plots; I only seem to remember the couples’ banter during the intros and endings.
4. To the Manor Born — I don’t recall the details, but the plot of this one involved two people who each claimed ownership of a mansion, and neither was willing to move out. One was a man and one was a woman, of course. I suppose romantic tension ensued. This was the first Britcom I came across after discovering Father, Dear Father, and I think I watched it more out of my newfound desire to see British comedies than because I really liked it.
5. Doctor in the House — The best one. This show actually started in the late 60s, though I was watching episodes from the 70s and early 80s. I was shocked, naive American kid that I was, to discover that they had television in England in the 60s, but not nearly as shocked as I was at some of the sex jokes and even pictures of pictures of actual nude girls! Let me clarify that. Nobody was nude on this or any other Britcom back then, but if, for instance, a male character had a nude girlie calendar on his wall, it would be fully shown. American TV didn’t even go that far, at least not any mainstream American TV shows that I watched back then. Doctor in the House, which was about randy, drink-loving medical students, had a lot of this sort of picture-in-a-picture nudity, and I spotted it on Butterflies (those teenage sons) from time to time as well. Any notions I had about British people being “stuffy” had pretty much disappeared by now.
6. Sorry! — I’m not entirely sure of the name of this series, but I think it was Sorry with an exclamation point. It was about a 40-ish single man who still lived with his parents. His mother was overbearing and his dad tolerated life with her mostly in silence. I believe the actor who played the son was a famous British comedian. I still remember lines from this show, but not actual episode plots. The funniest bits involved that mother, and the son or his dad patiently dealing with her with well-warranted sarcasm.
7. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — Not a sitcom but a miniseries, which was based on a radio play that was based on the book by Douglas Adams. I discovered it by way of the TV series. I followed that with the book (and sequels) and the radio play. Please don’t talk to me about the 2005 movie version with Zooey Deschanel. The original series is hilarious, the book is hilarious, the radio series is fun. The movie, despite some great talent, and Zooey Deschanel, is nothing.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, the real British original, is on Britbox. You can also find Keeping Up Appearances, a great 90s sitcom, as well as the indescribably hilarious 80s sketch comedy from Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie A Bit of Fry and Laurie there. But with the exception of some dramas and Fawlty Towers, Britbox doesn’t seem to have anything that was made before the 1980s. Maybe they don’t have the streaming rights. Or maybe they think nobody would want to watch such old shows. But I would.