The ‘Golden Age’: 1969–1980. Part 2: Soldiers, Shopping, and Sexual Frustration

This chapter continues the exploration of the British sitcom spinoff film’s classic/mature stage, aka its ‘Golden Age’, now adopting a thematic approach to examine how the genre provided the necessary ‘repetition with variation’ within the standard comedy situations of work institutions and domestic lifestyles. The early 1970s is shown to repeat the spinoff patterning of the late 1950s, with a forces sitcom Dad’s Army (1971), a return to (now state) education with Please Sir! (1971) and a less successful reprise of family-based sitcom spinoffs with For the Love of Ada (1972), a surprising entry from Tigon Productions. Spinoff films with a retail setting are explored with Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width (1973) and Are You Being Served? (1977), the latter exemplifying the dangers both of a holiday plot displacement and of stretching its sexual content beyond television’s permitted levels. More middle-class sitcom spinoff films, complete with reactionary ideologies, are discussed with Father, Dear Father (1973) and Bless This House (1973). Finally, more achieved adaptations are examined with The Lovers! (1973) and The Likely Lads (1976), films reviving elements of the British New Wave, while source-text claustrophobia is shown to be successfully maintained in Porridge (1979) and Rising Damp (1980): all are discussed as works displaying skilled ensemble playing and not afraid to probe the more melancholic aspects of their characters’ lives.