The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
BBC revives our much-loved sitcoms
Television: Several classics, including Are You Being Served?, will return to our screens this year
Alf Garnett, the controversial protagonist of Till Death Us Do Part, is set to return to TV screens as the BBC revives a host of much-loved sitcoms.
One-off specials of three “lost sitcoms” – Till Death Us Do Part, Hancock’s Half Hour and Steptoe and Son – will be based on the original scripts.
The recordings of the shows as they initially aired did not survive, so they will be recreated by a brand new cast.
Till Death Us Do Part’s angry protagonist Alf, who was originally played by the late Warren Mitchell, will be seen again in the 1967 episode A Woman’s Place Is In The Home.
Written by Johnny Speight, it features Alf ranting at his wife Else when he returns home to an empty house and a burnt supper in scenes which could jar with modern audiences.
These remakes will be at the heart of a “landmark comedy sitcom season”, which marks 60 years since Hancock’s Half Hour was first broadcast on television.
Popular classics also set to be revisited include Are You Being Served?, Porridge, Up Pompeii! and Keeping Up Appearances.
The long-rumoured “special prequel” to Keeping Up Appearances will star a young Hyacinth “Bouquet” Bucket in a one-off episode called Young Hyacinth.
Set in the late 1950s and written by the show’s creator Roy Clarke, it shows Hyacinth taking charge of the family as she, her sisters and her father are left by their mother.
The BBC has also confirmed the return of classic prison sitcom Porridge, which is back nearly 40 years after Norman Stanley Fletcher served his time at Slade prison.
Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, who created the series in the ’70s, will write the one-off special episode. It sees Fletch’s grandson – also known as Fletch – imprisoned for a series of cyber crimes.
Are You Being Served? will pick up where it left off, with a “brand new all-star cast” following a new script as they bring Grace Brothers back to life.