261 George and Mildred

First  watched  :  6  September  1976

ITV  was  generally  an  arid  desert  as  far  as  good  sitcoms  went  - forget  the  racist  angle, Love  Thy  Neighbour  was  complete  shite  anyway - but  George  and  Mildred  was  better  than  most  including  the  one  from  which  it  was  a  spin-off.

George  and  Mildred  took  the  middle-aged  couple  the  Ropers  letting  the  flat  in  Man  About  The  House   and  replanted  them  in  a  nice  neighbourhood  ( through  the  unlikely  device  of  a  CPO  on  the  old  property )  next  door  to  the  impeccably  middle  class  Fourmiles  with  annoying  little  boy  Tristram.

Mildred  ( Yootha  Joyce  )  wants  to  move  up  in  the  world  to  compensate  for  her  sexual  frustration  with  George  ( Brian  Murphy  )   who  by  contrast  doesn't  want  to  lose  contact  with  his  old  mates  down  the  boozer. Jeffrey  Fourmile  ( the  giant  Norman  Eshley )  is  appalled  tby  having  them  as  neighbours  though  his  wife  Ann  ( Sheila  Fearn ) is  more  easy  going  and  Tristram  ( Nicholas Bond-Owen )  is  adept  at , apparently  innocently, giving  voice  to  the  sentiments  the  adults  are  trying  to  disguise.  Roy  Kinnear  as  George's  dishonest  mate  Jerry  headed  a  strong  supporting  cast.

George  and  Mildred   was  never  very  subtle  in  its  exploration  of  class  conflict  but  it  was  pretty  funny  and  very  popular .  Although  Ann  was  a  sympathetic  character  who  often   defused  situations  with  common  sense  you  never  quite  decided  who  you  wanted  to  side  with  among  the  other  three  with  their  conflicting  agendas. As  for  Tristram  it  was  a  fertile  subject  of  playground  discussion  as  to  what  grisly  fate  would  suit  him  best

 It  was  only  brought  to  an  end  by  the  unexpected  death  of  Yootha  Joyce  in  1980  from  chronic  alcoholism, unexpected  because  none  of  her  colleagues  were  aware  of  the  problem. I  suspect  I  wasn't  watching  by  then  as  I  have  no  recollection  of  seeing  Tristram  getting  older.

Apart  from  Kinnear, George  and  Mildred  was  a  high  point  for  all  the  cast. Murphy, now  in  his  eighties  , has  worked  steadily  since  including  inevitably  a  stint  in  Last  of  the  Summer  Wine . Eshley  was  an  extremely   busy  actor  in  the  seventies  usually  in  serious  roles  but  then  it  all  seemed  to  go  a  bit  quiet  for  him  in  the  eighties. In  1993  he  was   involved  in  a  serious  road  crash  sustaining  head  injuries  which  left  him  unable  to  work  in  theatre  though  he  still  pops  up  on  telly  in  small  roles. Fearn  quit  acting  after  the  childrens  sitcom  News  at  Twelve  in  1988  and  disappeared  into  private  life. And  finally  what  of  little  Tristram. Nicholas  Bond-Owen  whose  acting  was  just  about  passable   continued   in  acting  to  the  end  of  his  teens  then  worked  for  Penguin  Books  as  a  distributor. He  now  works  in  the  same  capacity  for  City  A.M.