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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 379735" data-attributes="member: 23">Series One of On The Buses drew quietly into the terminal yesterday.Since I'm concurrently watching 1984 Brookside, I'm finding the hierarchy at the depot interesting. The delicate balance between workers (us) and management/inspectors (them) with Jack playing the Bobby Grant role of steward. It's interesting to note that Bobby - despite being far more volatile in nature - has far more sensitivity and across-the-board understanding and is (mostly) geared towards finding a workable solution, whereas Jack - ostensibly the amiable, friendly type - is the one looking for the opportunity to flex his muscles and hold things up. There were echoes of this political side, too, when Stan briefly became assistant Inspector, and so effectively one of "them".The work environment does open up possibilities for such dynamics. All the same, even at this early run it feels that the series has begun to exhaust its own potential in this regard. In just seven episodes, Stan has dated a clippie and had a go at being Inspector; Olive has been brought out of the house and briefly became a clippie herself, before she and Mabel made a mess of running the staff canteen. It's feeling as though they're on the verge of having "done" everything to play around with things before resetting, and I find myself wondering how much more they can do without simply getting into a lather, rinse, repeat cycle.Even an ITV sitcom has an element of social documentary to it. Invariably, it's attitudes towards race that seem most noticeable. The Canteen had the most glaring example here, in the form of Mr and Mrs Sharma. Mr Sharma - a previously unseen colleague of Stan's - smiled and said "goodness gracious me" while wobbling his head, which was enough to get his wife the job. Mrs Sharma didn't speak a word of English, wore a sari in place of an overall and served up exclusively food that was hot enough to blow everyone's heads off. Then, after the inevitable first-day sacking, Mr Sharma was money-savvy enough to demand (with Jack's help) a week's pay for his wife as well as severance and whatever else. It's at least something that the characters were played by genuine Indian actors, though I really felt for them (and other actors of the time) that the only parts available played up to stereotypes.  They came across as nice people, but I'm not sure this helped since there was still a patronising view of them as vastly different and very non-British. For all the controversy around Alf Garnett at least, from the little I've seen, it's Alf himself who is the ridiculous one, with characters like Winston in on the joke.On the other hand, On The Buses has included a few non-white actors playing colleagues, mostly without comment which at least suggests a degree of progressiveness. Rudolph Walker's character springs to mind (I liked him in his single episode and was sorry to find he wasn't a recurring character).I'll also note that these first seven episodes have felt a bit of a trudge at times. Already I've found myself starting to think of On The Buses in terms of simply getting through it while anticipating the next sitcom (I've even found myself slightly enviously watching the odd clip of Till Death Us Do Part thinking it looks more accessible than I'd imagined and half wishing I'd given that it's inaugural viewing instead). I'm sure the black and white hasn't helped because psychologically it just makes things look drabber and feel slower. The 1970s sitcom is just one of those creatures that seems better suited to colour. But, of course, we haven't yet even reached the Seventies.One significant disappointment in the latter part of Series One was that the episodes appeared to have been from a secondary source. Early episodes not only correctly had the LWT idents and ad bumpers (signifying End Of Part One and Part Two), but also the little Easter egg of the VT clock at the beginning of episodes. The last few episodes, however, had none of this. The theme just seemed to start out of nowhere, while the breaks between Part One and Two were a dissolve that sometimes seemed to occur mid-sentence. This left me feeling I'd missed something. It also might explain why the series began to feel like a drag, since if it wasn't from the master then it would have lacked that crispness. This, in turn, becomes like watching through a veil which makes it a less immersive experience.Thankfully, having popped in the disc for Series Two, I did note that its first episode featured a VT clock (and it looks a particularly good one, beginning with a long shot of a chair sitting in the middle of a set, before the camera zooms in). This bodes well.</blockquote>

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