I’ve tried to watch this show, but just can’t get into it. My local PBS station has decided it would be a good idea to show it at 11pm every night. So while I’m flipping channels, I catch a few seconds of it. The older lady (Mrs. Slocumb?) usually sports a bizarre hair (wig?) color on each show. What’s the deal?
To make do exactly what you have done. React to it.
Is it part of the plot somehow? Or do the other characters just ignore it?
It’s not part of the plot, more part of the character. She’s an older lady, living alone, spending most of her evenings at home “pettin’ me pussy” (and she means her CAT) and giving out advice to the other characters on the show.
It’s actually a very funny show - give it a chance. Think of it as a much longer Benny Hill sketch. There have been several pants-wettingly funny moments I can recall - most of them involving the little poofter guy.
Well… actually, I think, many nights she’s not home with her pussy, she’s down to the pub with her friend Mrs. Axleby.
I don’t think she used wigs. I think she actually died her hair all those colors. I can’t remember any of the other characters ever commenting on any of the dos or colors.
It’s often very funny.
She has what’s known as a ‘blue rinse’ or a ‘pink rinse’. Golden agers in the UK think it makes them look cool.
You know, all the cool kids are doing it
I wish I could find it on my TV. I love this show, but it’s never on.
Oh, and Mr. Blue Sky, you think her hair is bad? You should hear her full name!
This is a great show. In the early days of the show, Molly Sugden actually dyed her hair a different color for each episode. This got to be too hard on her hair, so thereafter she wore colored wigs. This is one of the great things about the show is that nobody in a single episode ever says one thing about her hair color.
Good news- you don’t have to depend on your PBS station for your AYBS fix. You can get DVDs of the first six seasons. These are the better shows anyway because the show went downhill after losing Mr. Grainger and Mr. Lucas.
I thought it might be a comment on the society – that people don’t like to mention others’ eccentricities. It’s pretty much how things are here …eccentricity is accepted, acording to many visitors, to an uncommon degree. Or is it idiosyncratic behaviour, perhaps … fwiw, my street’s knee deep in batty old battleaxe’s sporting Technicolor ‘hair-do’s’. I wonder - seriously - if it’s to do with the HRT doseage ?
The point is that for a woman of Slocombe’s age and type a change in hair colour isn’t remarkable, any more than a change of dress.
I’ll never understand the American fascination with this programme. It was formulaic and dreadful.
Fun Fact! Interior designer Elsie DeWolfe was the first to popularize the “blue rinse,” in the 1930s. She also cried out happily, “Just my color—beige!” when she first saw the Pyramids.
My mother, by the way, loves AYBS?, but I don’t get it anymore where I live.
I’ve seen interviews with the stars and they are equally surprised. So were the casts of other shows like The Good Life (Neighbors), Yes, Minister, & Yes, Prime Minister and so forth.
Are you unanimous in that?
I used to find this show snoozingly boring, but…it kind of grows on you. The banal formulaicism (hey, I made a word!) is part of the charm. No, really it is! It did take awhile to ratchet my mind around to its level, though.
Candy Davis was bimbolicious, too.
Oh, as MSU 1978 noted, she started out coloring, and went to wigs at some point. I saw it on one of those PBS Festival interviews with her.
“You’ve all done very well!”
I’ll add my vote to the “it’s dreadful” camp. It was low-brow, juvenile, cheap claptrap. I don’t think it’s been on British TV in approximately forever.
Conversely, The Good Life was quite good and Yes Minister/PM were excellent.
Benny Hill was crap also.
No, no, no, no, to quote that old guy on the Dibly program, those who don’t like ARE YOU BEING SERVED are wrong. It was hilarious and don’t forget it was in the 70’s when doing things with your hair was spreading from the youth to the rest. The show was obviously about class distinctions and what fine lines there have been in British society. Everybody was trying to be as high class as possible, which made things very funny because of the pettiness this entails. The department store went out of business aftera while and the characters got together and bought a country hotel, and this was funny too as they tried to run it. All British tv is much funnier than our American tv (except for MARRIED WITH CHILDREN, a true American classic).
In fact there isn’t anything funny on American tv, just formula without hilarity, and most of the sit coms try to have a serious
moment. The more odd the better, I always say. Americans still value conformity. Although Quentin Crisp said it was the opposite, that the English are hateful and Americans are wonderful. I myself was over there and found everything perfect in England and Scotland, but this was many years ago. The people were friendly even instead of ignore you. Well that’s another story, now for an episode of FAWLTY TOWERS --OH the one series I’ve seen part of that I didn’t think was entertaining was about this couple who met years ago and then met again and are they going to get married this time now that they are over 30. And also I don’t see anything funny about the guy who is a cook and his wife and they run a restaurant and he bosses everybody around. I don’t get that at all.
Of course. you have to remember that (usually) on the best shows from Britain end up shown in the US (via PBS and BBC Americas) and vice versa. Plus, with far fewer episodes per season, the writers can invent better jokes, situations, more original ideas. Not to discount British humor or quality of the show, which often is more experimental and original than American TV, although we do have our experimental and original shows as well. It’s just a matter of perspective.
The couple that met years ago is probably in As Time Goes By, with Judi Dench. It is gentle humor. The program about a cook is probably Chef, starring Lenny Henry, who is the husband of Dawn Fench, who is The Vicar of Dibley (the “Dibly program” mentioned in the first sentence).
Hear! Hear! I never understood why he was more popular than Dave Allen. (And put Dave’s stuff out on DVD will you? Thanks.)