★★★★★ 0/5

Lost episodes of Till Death Us Do Part to screen in UK

1960's buffoon Alf Garnett will live again in long lost episodes to screen on a retro British TV channel.

10
Leave a comment

Four lost episodes of classic Brit-com Till Death Us Do Part, not seen for over 50 years, are set to screen in the UK.

The show lampooned the views of its central character, Alf Garnett, a bombastic big-mouthed buffoon with a reactionary opinion on everything and spawned the equally successful All in the Family in the USA.

Although most of the early episodes of were wiped in the 1960s, a handful of these ‘lost’ recordings have been discovered by budding technicians and film collectors over the past 20 years.

Garnett was played by the late Warren Mitchell, who described the character as “an ignorant, loud-mouthed, stupid pig of a man. A know-all. Nasty, repulsive.”

Being one of the first BBC shows in the 1960s to feature the swear word “bloody” (broadcast 1,436 times during the first seven seasons), moral crusader Mary Whitehouse sent a telegram to Harold Wilson, the Prime Minister, describing the series as “dirty, blasphemous and full of bad language.”

But Dennis Main Wilson, the veteran BBC comedy producer said in 1973: “Our intention was to hold a mirror up to the world. Let it see itself – warts and all. With his loud-mouthed bigotries, he was to be the anti-hero. He was to be laughed at – not with.”

In 1972 Mitchell performed as Alf Garnett with his co-stars live for The Queen at the Royal Variety Performance. Following the recording of the charity show Prince Philip introduced the creator Johnny Speight to Princess Anne saying: “This is the gentleman who writes your mother’s favourite show.”

Episodes will screen on Classic TV channel That’s TV.

Source: Yahoo

10 Responses

  1. Political correctness is out of hand….difficult to have an opposite opinion to anything…or any opinion without being shot down in flames from all sides.

  2. Till Death Us Do Part would be a curiosity nowadays especially for younger viewers, assuming they take an interest in British comedy, Alf Garnett just would not fit into the social politics nowadays, though back then you could say he was a working class archetype of the late 60’s even though Alf was a conservative who enjoyed chastising his left wing son in law Anthony Booth and being put in his place by his wife played brilliantly by Dandy Nichols, only his daughter tried to understand him and ignored his bigoted politically prejudiced mind.
    Another show which followed a similar theme and would likely raise a few eybrows was Love Thy Neighbour with Jack Smethurst and West Indian Rudolph Walker who delighted in calling Smethhurst’s Eddie Booth character ‘Honky’. These type of shows were popular for a reason, because they identified a social issue within Britain and softened the hard edges with satire. It would take a courageous producer and screenplay/writer to do the same…

  3. i wonder if it will even get an airing here in Australia. I remember the uproar going back about 5 yrs ago or so when 7 were going to replay ‘Love Thy Neighbour’ but did not go ahead because people said the show was too racist. Must admit i never watched Til Death but know the character of Alf Garnett was notorious for being a bigot.

    So i don’t know if its the same with Til Death but in LTN, it was actually the white guy who always ended up looking the fool when the black character ‘won’ their arguments/disputes and the 2 wives got along fine just sitting back & laughing at their antics.

    I realize it is a fine line with ‘political correctness’ though, but it all has to be take in context. I met someone recently who had Tongan relatives who apparently loved ‘Jonah From Tonga’ the ABC comedy which was been cancelled for being racist. Each to their own?

  4. How good would it be to have a truly retro channel here. There are multiple channels through both UK and US but we don’t get anything like that here purely dedicated to classic shows and movies.

      2. TV1 certainly started that way –
        it was great for the first few years.

        But then Foxtel forgot their selling point of something for everyone, when they began focusing on ratings.

        At that point only a select group of the most popular shows (eg Frasier, Seinfeld) ran – over and over and over again.

        (Similar to what 10 Peach is doing now prior to 830pm)

Leave a Reply