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Are You Being Served?
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Over the course of 69 episodes that ran between 1972 and 1985, writers Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft established themselves as titans of double entendre with Are You Being Served?
The show remains one of Britain's longest-running sitcoms, well-loved by British and American audiences for bawdy innuendos that would have made Shakespeare proud. Set in the fictional Grace Brothers department store, with plenty of opportunity for mannequin gags, it's often a comedy of dialect, from fey to cockney to faux upper class. The show was reportedly based on Lloyd's stint in the early 1950s as clerk in Simpsons of Picadilly, a well-known London department store. In 1992, actors from Are You Being Served? reprised their roles in a 12-episode series called Grace & Favour (the premise of the follow-up series, that doddering Mr. Grace died in a scuba accident, is hilarious in and of itself).
Wikipedia's entry has a nice description of the campy cast of characters, and here's an interesting tidbit, courtesy of Wikipedia: The pilot of Are You Being Served? (the only episode shot in black and white) aired when it did, on September 8, 1972, because of a gap in programming created by the Munich massacre at the Summer Olympics.
What else have cast members done? Find out courtesy of the Internet Movie Database:
- Mollie Sugden (Mrs. Betty Slocombe of the hair of many colors and head of the Ladies' Department) is now well into her eighties and continued to act until 2003.
- John Inman (Mr. Wilberforce Clayborne Humphries, mincing senior menswear assistant, later head of the Gentleman's Department) was best known for this role, but he also worked in the London theater. He died in 2007.
- Frank Thorton (self-important Captain Peacock) played the character of Truly in 64 episodes of Last of the Summer Wine, another extremely successful British comedy. He also appeared in the 2002 film "Gosford Park".
- Wendy Richard(cheeky, voluptuous, cockney Miss Shirley Brahms) played Pauline in EastEnders from 1985 until 2006 for a whopping 1,218 episodes.
- Nicholas Smith (dense Mr. Cuthbert Rumbold) voiced Reverend Hedges in "Wallace and Grommit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit" (2005).
- Because the series lasted so long, many other characters rotated in and out. Check the Internet Movie Database's cast list for Are You Being Served? to learn more about the work of other characters who graced the floors of Grace Brothers department store.
