Bless This House - Series 5

TV : Comedy : DVD quality : English


ITV can't make sitcoms, apparently; which is why they rely on bog-standard reality shows like "Celebrity"

Love Island (who hell he?) and copious episodes of soap operas. However ITV need to look at its glorious past and the

folks at Thames who produced some of the classic comedies of the 1970s- "The Benny Hill Show", "Man About

the House", "The Kenny Everett Video Show", and "Bless this House" (we'll forget about the

tawdry efforts of "Love thy Neighbour, thank you).

In "Bless this House", we have typical British sitcom fayre; middle-class family in a domestic setting,

grumpy dad, stay-at-home mum, and two "teenagers" who, like most TV teens seem a bit long in the tooth. What

raises bar in BTH is, undoubtedly, the casting of Sid James as, er, Sid, a middle-aged sales rep who is continually

bewildered by the behaviours of his kids- the groovy Mike (Robin Stewart) and the sweetly sexy Sally Geeson, who plays,

er, Sally. Diana Coupland completes the complement in her solid portrayal of Sid's long-suffering wife Jean.

Typically, the "sit" for each episode revolves around misunderstandings, Sid trying to negotiate the

generation gap, worrying about Mike's sexuality, and trying to shield Sally from an evermore permissive world. Fan's of

Sid's "Blimey" and "Oh my Gawd" skills honed in the "Carry on..." films are not

disappointed here;James delivers such lines in each episode with his usual aplomb.

Yes, the programme was made on the cheap; and, yes, it does contained some outmoded opinions regarding the

"place" of women and sexuality, but hey, I'd rather watch half an hour of the master at work than some

non-entities griping on about nothing particularly interesting in an over-hyped non-shag-fest.


First couple of seasons are in black and white