Stereotypical 70's ITV Sitcom Scares Me Silly (George & Mildred)

Member Name: dave27

Product:	George & Mildred
Date:	07/02/04 (184 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Finished now

Disadvantages: Ever existed

MILDRED ... the oddest of odd names ... MILL DREAD ... MILD RED ... MILDEW HEAD ... all sorts of unpleasant connotations with this name, and always ones which shake you silly ... they must have spent ages trying to get that one right, and they certainly managed it ...

Then we had GEORGE as the partner's name, one of the ultimate, old fashioned, middle aged man's name ... perfectly formed and endlessly dumb, just one little letter away from gorge, indicating the voracious desire for sating one's more hedonistic urges, the complete opposite of how the character actually was...

Stick them both together and call them the ROPERS, as in dopes, ropey, mopers, no hopers ...

It's all fanciful fluff and doubtless there wasn't half that much thought going into it, just a hasty selection of the naffest names one could possibly pick for a couple, first created as bit part characters in the man about the house comedy series which featured Richard O'Sullivan, Paula Wilcox and Sally Thomsett. Now that was an awful sit com, so stereotypically typical of Thames TV and an unlikeable/likeable heir to the bland monotony of Bless This House and Terry And June ... but it was surpassed more than somewhat by George And Mildred.

Man About The House featured O'Sullivan as the randy(!) bewhiskered bachelor who moves in with Chrissie and Jo, two desirable and unattached females with predictably hilarious (!) (or hilariously predictable to be more exact) results. They all live in the house owned by the Ropers, played splendidly by Yootha Joyce and Brian Murphy. After two or three successful series, the
Ropers earned a spin off series in their own right and did quite well out on their own, with the Fourmile family next door becoming the new stooges, the strait laced straight men who suffered the anguish of living next door to the ropers.

Now genuinely, there isn't a great deal more to George And Mildred than that ... they were a stereotypical middle aged couple as described and re-engineered time and again by Thames ... she a voracious, man eating, sex starved housewife who is endlessly bored and in need of some excitement, he an insipid, boring, set in his ways, run of the mill, dull loser with no chin or hair ... the two endlessly bickering and moaning at each other with Mildred eager for some unknown reason to sample George's carnal wares ... it's as bland and blatant as the endless jokes by Mollie Sugden in Are You Being Served about her pussy ... double entendre is too refined a phrase for this endless muck raking and sewer scraping ... of course, it was innocently English to the extreme and thoroughly harmless for the most part, but just so mushy and unchallenging, preaching to the converted and without a shock to its name.

The late Yootha Joyce and Brian Murphy achieved the height of their fame/infamy in George And Mildred and were certainly both well suited and made for their parts, although they never had to try too hard. They could eat, drink and sleep these characters and did so with a verve and sick enthusiasm which was very depressing and irritating at times. Of course, the more irritating part was the obligatory cute and precocious kid from next door at the Fourmiles, and the prissy snobbery of Geoffrey Fourmile, the archetypal nouveau riche, stuck up, aspiring professional, who is appalled to find these horrible little people moving in next door to him and letting the entire side down. As well as all
that, of course, he also has glasses, a moustache and an appallingly straight side parting hairstyle ... highly undesirable characteristics, I know you'll agree. There are indeed people around like that, but not to the banal extreme as depicted here. However, in sit com land all is fair and the more extreme and unrealistic the better to achieve the correct comic effect. Of course, it's all pap, blobby, doughy, self obsessed, unchallenging, leaden footed pap of the most despicable sort. One really should not take these things that seriously, but you know that I can't avoid doing so and put myself all sorts of torture because of my seething rage at the way them upstairs who are responsible for commissioning these things seem convinced this sort of stuff is actually funny and are intent on force feeding us with an endless stream of such garbage. Of course, my current mood is not exactly lightened by another oh so depressing defeat for Leeds United in this season from hell. I have to take my annoyance out on someone, and unfortunately it's George And Mildred today. But I am not apologising because this is one of the more unpleasant, stereotypical, unamusing television sit coms I have ever been unlucky enough to endure. It's very telling that they all seem to be from the ITV stable, because in general BBC seems to have slightly higher standards (although Are You Being Served was a very notable exception ... NOW THEREBY DOES HANG A VERY LONG AND UNPLEASANT TAIL).

I know I'm being extremely unfair because TV series have their place in this amazing world of ours, it's just that the place tends to be at the bottom of a very large and unpleasan
t swamp in the back of beyond.

Still you wouldn't be reading a review by dave27 if you were looking for charity and sympathy and I doubt if you'd be reading about George And Mildred if you were looking for an uplifting experience. THIS COMEDY SERIES IS TRULY ABYSMAL, please do not believe anyone who tells you it was ironic, or harmless, or just a bit of fun, or clever, or a startling dissection of the endless stupidity of 20th Century family life, it is just banal, lazy, stereotypical, unfunny pap with weak punchlines, shallow and unbelievable characters and depressing blandness. Psssssst... I don't really like it ... AT ALL.

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