ARE YOU BEING SERVED? was a much-loved sitcom running throughout the Seventies and early Eighties that made a star out of John Inman and greatly enhanced the careers of established character actors such as Frank Thornton and Mollie Sugden. Basically a ragbag series of jokes and doubles entendres, it spawned a series of catchphrases including Inman's "I'm free!" and Sugden's numerous jokes about her pussy.
The series was part of a venerable tradition of camp comedy stretching back through the CARRY ON series of films back into the variety work of Max Miller. It was the product of a society constrained by Victorian tradition, wherein sexual matters were not to be discussed in public but only alluded to, chiefly through humorous means.
How times have changed. Camp comedy has been superseded by a much more overt strain of humor that might appear offensive to some but draws huge ratings. Comparing ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS or THE OFFICE with the less in-your-face style of ARE YOU BEING SERVED? is like trying to parallel chalk and cheese; each possesses their own comic style, the product of very different eras.
The passage of time has not been kind to ARE YOU BEING SERVED? In this "reboot" as the BBC likes to describe it, the well-loved characters are played by different actors: Roy Barraclough does a creditable stab at Arthur Borough's Mr. Grainger, while John Challis makes a passable Captain Peacock, even though his screen persona comes across as a lot less refined than Thornton's. Some of the other impersonations are just plain embarrassing; the less said about Sherrie Hewson's Mrs. Slocombe, and Justin Edwards's Mr. Rumbold, the better.
But perhaps the most embarrassing aspect of the whole enterprise is the script, written this time by Daren Litten. Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft's original efforts contained a fair share of bawdy humor, but there was always a certain innocence underneath, almost as if the characters did not quite understand the implications of what they were saying. Here the humor is defiantly in-your-face: each joke is telegraphed by the actors looking at one another and then at the camera, as if prompting us to erupt into gales of unrestrained laughter.
Some of the jokes are downright offensive, especially the references to "seamen" on deck, or Mr. Conway's (Kayode Ewumi's) efforts to prevent Captain Peacock from choking on a lobster bone by coming up behind him and maneuvering himself in a sequence which, to those not in the know, might seem like an homosexual act. When Mr. Grace (Mathew Horne) enters, this is precisely what he assumes. The studio audience erupt into paroxysms of mirth, but as they have been cackling away at almost anything during the previous twenty-six minutes, we might suspect that they are simply a laugh-track dubbed on to the final cut.
Produced to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the sitcom genre on television, we are clearly meant to approach this reboot with affectionate nostalgia. In truth, watching this farrago of nonsense makes one fear for its future; perhaps television needs to be led kicking and screaming out of the past into something more innovative, just like Mr. Grace wants to do to the much-loved store he owns.
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