Wednesday 20 April 2016

383 Chalk and Cheese



First  viewed  : Monday  2  April  1979

This  short  lived  comedy  series  proved  a  salutary  lesson  that  if  you  want  to  escape  your  past  you  must   take  care  to  choose  the  right  vehicle. Eager  to  escape  the  image  of  Frank  Spencer  , Michael  Crawford  took  on  the  role  of  Dave  Finn  ( played  by  Jonathan  Pryce  in  the  1977  pilot ) , a  caustic , opinionated , left  wing, bearded  layabout  awaiting  the  birth  of  his  third  child  and  a  constant  annoyance  to  middle  class  neighbour  Roger  ( Robin  Hawdon ). In  the  first  episode  , the  only  one  which  I   ( and  I  suspect  many  others ) watched , Roger  had  the  misfortune  of  having  Dave   for  company  in  the  maternity  ward  waiting  room , hectoring  him  about  his  lifestyle  and  pretending  to  be  having  sympathetic  labour  pains.

Having  just  endured  the  Winter  of  Discontent ,  the  audience  found  Crawford's  new  character  as  appetising  as  a  bucket  of  cold  sick  and  turned  off  in  droves,  just  as  they  would  emphatically  reject  Dave  Finn's  values  at  the  ballot  box   in  the  General  Election  which  more  or  less  coincided  with  the  end  of  the  series'  run. It  never  returned.

Crawford  has  rarely  been  on  television  since , pursuing  a  highly  successful  career  in  musical  theatre  instead. He  occasionally  appears  on  chat  shows  to  promote  his  latest  show  and  has  even  agreed  to  don  the  old  mac  and  beret  on  a  couple  of  occasions, for  Noel's  House  Party  and  this  years  Sport  Relief. Hawdon  has  never  appeared  on  TV  since  but  has  become  a  successful  playwright  and  novelist  with  stage  acting  gradually  taking  a  back  seat  to  his  writing.    

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