User Reviews

This episode of the popular British comedy series illustrates a real problem regarding English (and I suspect European and Foreign humor) that Americans have been trying to deal with here since the age of Lenny Bruce. Although humor deals with discomforting images of people, humiliated or momentarily hurt in some manner (deserved or not), there has also always been elements of bigotry or bias to different groups in humor. It the humor is self-deprecating (a Jewish comedian talking about himself and his fellow Jews, like Jackie Mason, or an African-American talking about African-Americans, like Redd Foxx) the audience does not care because we are laughing with the party. But when a Caucasian makes remarks about other groups, we start thinking differently about it (unless, like Don Rickels, he or she attacks all the groups including his or her own). We call it "political correctness" for better or worse. Other countries in the west struggle with it, but I suspect the U.S. (with it's really polyglot population) deals with it more frequently.

The issue is should we do this, or should we just enjoy the joke?

The British are slowly getting it into their heads that with increased foreign (i.e., non-White) peoples being third or fourth generation English, they have to clean up their act too. But there are vestiges that are visible from a few decades ago that surprise and baffle us, and probably (when they appeared) did not bother the British public for the most part.

This was the "Christmas Episode" for 1981 of ARE YOU BEING SERVED?, which usually had a number of musical sequences for the regulars. Here they are having a 90th Birthday party of old Mr. Grace (Kenneth Waller) and even bring back his predecessor and younger brother young Mr. Grace (Harold Bennett). In 1981 the success of the television program ROOTS from the U.S. was an international phenomenon. That series, you recall, was Alex Hailey's attempt to trace his ancestry in the U.S. back to Kunte Kinte, the African who came to the U.S. as a slave in the 18th Century, through other figures in the 19th and 20th Centuries like Chicken George. It is a phenomenon still affecting us - just look at the number of genealogical sites on the internet some forty years after that show. Keeping this in mind, the episode followed how the staff of Rumbolt's floor are assigned to do genealogical research into the Grace family, and to present a pageant of that research with a song from the part of England the Grace's originated from.

Well, the Graces are first shown as Scotsmen, then Yorkshiremen, then Welsh, with slight changes in their name.

SPOILER COMING UP:

Then we are told they are further south in origin than that. To the tune of "Waitin' For the Robert E. Lee" we see the cast come out in top hats, tales, and black-face (yes, black-face) for the finale.

Now the effect, to me, is mixed. A similar kind of joke on a "Benny Hill" show (where Hill, back in the late 1970s, was playing the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin) also has that on me. Hill was in a military tunic and wore black face. He behaved...well as nutty as Benny Hill usually did. But the black face got me, as did a joke on the tyrant's name (the tyrant's desk had two "in" and "out" mail boxes, labeled "Amin" and "Amout"). But Hill's hit and run comedy, if here unsettling, could quickly pass to the next matter. Not so with the finale of ARE YOU BEING SERVED? for everything in the episode led to that conclusion (which made a referenced pun of the title of the episode "Roots?"). While as well produced and performed as any other, the conclusion is out of kilter with what we currently expect - or what American audiences would have expected even in 1981! So I give it a "6" out of "10"...and it is a rather weak "6" at that!!

I love the series. So much talent. I loved this episode until the end.

Although the blackface number was performed well, I immediately felt like someone shoved me out of the room. Suddenly, in an instant, as a person of color, I had the ability to simply watch the show and enjoy as I had been doing for eight seasons taken from me. A bit like having cold water thrown on one as one is sleeping and enjoying a nice dream. A bitter reminder of current times. And oh by the way, "Robert E. Lee" was a Confederate general.

I see from the other reviews that this episode has become a magnet for people who want to brag about how they don't like what they call "political correctness". Great, congratulations. Glad you could share that with us. The episode ending was insensitive, you can't change that by bragging about something that you should be ashamed of.

I can forgive the writers and directors for this probably-inadvertent faux pas. BTW I noticed that Wendy Richard did not put on blackface. Was that a statement, or a directorial decision, or possibly an avoidance of allergic reaction? Does anyone know?

"When in doubt, just get the cast to do a song and dance number".

That seemed to be the mantra for the writers of 'Are You Being Served?' as it slipped into gradual decline.

In this 8th series Christmas Special the plot is so thin they end up doing 3 numbers to pass the time.

While it's admirable that the show/cast managed to weather the storm of so many cast departures between the 7th-8th series (and during, with Mrs Grossman lasting only a few episodes, to be replaced by the actually not too bad Mr Klein), the show was past its best by this point, and this episode reflects that.

The blackface part at the end also means that you're very unlikely to see this broadcast on TV again, so is probably best forgotten.