Perhaps the most undistinguished series that
Eric Chappell wrote and yet his
own personal favourite. I suppose that might be because (IIRC) it’s the only
one that really deals with parents and children (something almost entirely
absent from Rising Damp, The Bounder, Only When I Laugh, Duty
Free, etc.). The first half of this second episode
is exactly as you remember it being, with John Thaw's father nagging
Reece Dinsdale's feckless son in unsurprising exchanges to little comic result.
Things perk up considerably after the break when Henry takes Matthew to his old grammar school in the hope of enrolling him, and they encounter one of his old teachers, now the cane-wielding headmaster - a unique (surviving) sitcom appearance for Alfred Burke. He would have been about 65 when he recorded this, and his voice is just starting to get hoarser, bringing an interesting doomy cadence to lines such as, "I take it you have no objections to corporal punishment? I cane for swearing, smoking, spitting, horseplay, slack work, bullying and slovenliness. Apart from that, we're a fairly liberal regime."
Things perk up considerably after the break when Henry takes Matthew to his old grammar school in the hope of enrolling him, and they encounter one of his old teachers, now the cane-wielding headmaster - a unique (surviving) sitcom appearance for Alfred Burke. He would have been about 65 when he recorded this, and his voice is just starting to get hoarser, bringing an interesting doomy cadence to lines such as, "I take it you have no objections to corporal punishment? I cane for swearing, smoking, spitting, horseplay, slack work, bullying and slovenliness. Apart from that, we're a fairly liberal regime."
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