MR LUCAS: In two minutes I won't be free.
CAPTAIN PEACOCK: Why not, Mr Lucas?
LUCAS: Cos it's my coffee break.
PEACOCK: It will not be anybody's coffee break until I say so.
LUCAS: It must be frightening to have so much power, mustn't it, Mr Humphries?
MR HUMPHRIES: Let's hope he uses it for good.
There's more
recognisable workplace politics dramatized in this edition of Are You Being
Served? than I'm accustomed to, and it does the comedy a power of good. Mr
Rumbold is sent away to Swansea for a month's sales seminar (A month?
That's quite some executive jolly. No wonder Grace Bros is struggling...) and
appoints Mr Grainger in his place, over the head of a peeved Captain Peacock.
In a highly enjoyable reversal of expectations, the power turns the mild-mannered Mr Grainger into a monster. Much of the pleasure of the episode is in watching hitherto unused performance skills from Arthur Brough, particularly a guttural snarl and an absolute confidence in behaving nastily.
Having set up this situation, the episode does good work in reversing and rectifying it within half an hour. When Mr Rumbold unexpectedly returns, in one brief - but highly effective - scene Mr Grainger gets sent to Coventry when the entire staff refuse to pass the sugar to him in the canteen. Mr Rumbold's conference then gets relocated to Edinburgh, but Mr Grainger has learnt his lesson and become a considerate boss in the final scene. Its a model of classic three part thesis-antithesis-synthesis structure.
In a highly enjoyable reversal of expectations, the power turns the mild-mannered Mr Grainger into a monster. Much of the pleasure of the episode is in watching hitherto unused performance skills from Arthur Brough, particularly a guttural snarl and an absolute confidence in behaving nastily.
Having set up this situation, the episode does good work in reversing and rectifying it within half an hour. When Mr Rumbold unexpectedly returns, in one brief - but highly effective - scene Mr Grainger gets sent to Coventry when the entire staff refuse to pass the sugar to him in the canteen. Mr Rumbold's conference then gets relocated to Edinburgh, but Mr Grainger has learnt his lesson and become a considerate boss in the final scene. Its a model of classic three part thesis-antithesis-synthesis structure.
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