Where there's muck

ygwerin1

One of my absolute favourite comedy shows, and one of the best ever made.
Wilfred Brambell and Harry H. Corbett are exemplary as Albert and Harold, I hadn't seen either of them before so I didn't have any expectations. I simply just enjoyed watching the brilliant comedy, set in a totally different environment than any other show. With well crafted stories enacted more as plays than conventional sitcoms.

It was strange for me watching them years later, I found myself reacting more to the situations and the characterisations, than just watching the show as I had previously.
My son was doubtless right that it was possibly a sign of how good the acting was.

One of my favourite early episodes is where they go looking at new houses, sadly the quality of the monochrome film is such that it spoilt my enjoyment.
I have a few of the DVDs from some of the episodes broadcast in colour, where sadly they are only viewable in monochrome.
There was a break in broadcasting of a few years but I think the latter episodes were just as consistently good as any others.

Regrettably the Beeb had the worst attitude towards light entertainment programmes, in the early days of broadcasting. The earliest were live, this was before the advent of video recording, and the only way to record TV shows was on cine film. The BBC did not bother to tape most comedies, many of those they did had the tapes reused. Many of the earliest episodes of Steptoe only survived, thanks to the sterling work of the shows Appreciation Society, and certainly not to Auntie Beeb.

I don't trust the Documentaries about the program, which invariably tend to dwell on what I consider to be spurious considerations, of the alleged personal antagonism between the principal actors. Family members of the actors contradict that notion and I'd prefer to believe them than erroneous speculation.

score 10/10

ygwerin1 15 February 2019

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw4658312/