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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 385393" data-attributes="member: 23">Having exhausted the remaining Sixties episodes, I've now entered the technicolour world of Till Death Us Do Part's 1970s revival. I've read with interest some background to the series, and the problems plaguing production of the Sixties series with scripts coming in very late - largely due to Johnny Speight's desire to include topical discussion from the headlines - causing headaches for actors and producers alike. Ironically, I get the sense that those challenging early series are the ones now considered the series' heyday. The Seventies episodes seem to be viewed as deliberately less political and less topical. I suppose they are, but this makes these later episodes a little more timeless for me. While it was certainly interesting to see the late Sixties mainly through the prism of the political debate between Alf and Mike, I suppose a certain amount of it also went over my head because I have only a passing knowledge of the political landscape of the time, so dropping in a certain minister's name didn't give me the immediate context it would have done a viewer of the time, which meant certain gags didn't land with me. Further adding to the appeal of the Seventies episodes, there's more of a sense of  "themed" episodes. There's The One Where The Baby Is Born; The One Where They Go On Holiday; The One With The Pigeon Racing; The One Where Alf Has A Broken Leg; and so on. Arguably this puts it into more conventional sitcom territory, but Alf is still at the centre of things so it's never in danger of feeling like Bless This House or Happy Ever After or something. Alf is still pontificating in the living room and I continue to be impressed by the cast here. Warren Mitchell in particular has reams of dialogue which he fires off quickly and angrily - often whilst having some physical business to contend with, from eating to pacing around the room to hanging wallpaper. And he doesn't miss a single beat. Good as the ensemble is, it's easy to see that he is the core of this series. Those around him have far less dialogue, but if someone comes in with a line too soon and has to repeat it, it's invariably one of the others (I quite like when this happens because it adds to the series' naturalism, and I think the actors get that). Absolutely nothing seems to break Warren's stride and he seems to be permanently in full flight and if he's fluffed, I've yet to catch it. It's even more impressive to think that in the earlier episodes he was getting a lot of this material at the eleventh hour and still running with it. Una Stubbs has impressed me. I enjoy how forthright Rita has become. In early series Rita seemed to just be a bit of a mouthpiece, echoing what Mike said and laughing a lot. By this point, she seems to have a lot to say for herself, and it's not just Alf who gets it from her, but Mike too. There's a suggestion of growing irritation or resentment within the marriage, and it's creating a lot of interest. Adding to this, Rita is increasingly harried by the pressures of being a new mum in an environment where she gets very little support, and it feels like quite a statement that she's not radiantly glowing and cooing at the baby, but joining in the shouting as she holds him. In the latter part of the series, the baby has become a very obvious doll (with a realistic "ugly crying" face). This is a bit of a relief to me, since I was getting worried about the poor child getting billows of thick smoke in his face as actors leaned over him with cigarettes or pipes. The 1972 series has benefitted from Joan Sims being in most episodes as Gran. As I kind of/sort of remembered, she is with them in the living room now, and I assume she is actually a relative (presumably Else's mother and Rita's gran). She gives such a convincing old woman, it's quite awe-inspiring. Other familiar character actors this year have included Roy Kinnear as a colleague of Alf's (yes, we've seen him at work for the first time); Bill Maynard as the one with whom he had the bet on the pigeons and - rather more questionably - Spike Milligan in brownface.</blockquote>

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