Overview
This comedy series, which follows the exploits of employees at London's Grace Brothers department store, is full of sexual innuendo, slapstick, visual gags and double entendres. Much of the show's humor parodies Britain's class system, with the characters rarely calling their co-workers by their given names. Many of the show's characters are based on stereotypes, including the effeminate Mr. Humphries and the rich-but-stingy store owner.
| Original Air Dates: | — |
|---|---|
| Country: | UK |
| Genre: | Comedy |
| Network: | BBC One |
| Watched by: | 98 996 340 |
| Total running time: | 1 day 10 hours 15 minutes |
| Episode duration: | |
| Episodes: | 69 |
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At first glance, nothing worthy of attention. An ancient sitcom with a faded fuzzy image and off-screen laughter. The simplest plot, three rooms, schematic props, a dozen characters and outright clowning: antics, antics, grimacing. The impression is corrected by wonderful texts and successful mini-situations. Dialogues saturated with piquant ambiguities and sexual overtones may seem defiantly politically incorrect and even audacious to a modern viewer. Despite the one-sidedness, primitiveness and vulgarity of most jokes, a fair dose of ridicule goes to the traditional English class system, and the hierarchy in British society in general and in the big store in particular. However, many other, quite international human stupidities also did not go unchecked.
It was staged and filmed extremely simply, one might say chamber. They play with deliberate overkill, the characters are exaggerated, but recognizable. It turned out to be a good comedy, albeit without particularly refined humor. But with very interesting realities of the era: fashion, mores, types and others. And really very funny, some episodes turned out to be just hilarious.
Language. Almost continuous conversations. They speak vividly and sometimes quite quickly. I didn't notice any heavy accents, but there was a lot of wordplay. Fortunately, there were subtitles. To appreciate all the puns, a good dictionary can be useful.
Yes, and you also wrote correctly about the interesting details of the era: "salaries of 18 pounds a week and the price of oil, which has grown to as much as 3 dollars per barrel" :)