With the rest of the family down with the flu,
Sid has to do all the work. This Carla Lane episode is onto a winner, with it's
feminist theme about the relentless, underappreciated stress of the women's
work of housework disguised through the highly entertaining sight of Sid James
floundering about in a frilly apron.
Its the simplest things that James does particularly well in this episode - especially when pressed into doing several things immediately, with the phone and doorbell ringing at once while his wife calls from upstairs. He turns around several times at speed considering which thing to do first, starts to walk up the stairs, gets called back downstairs, talks on the phone while simultaneously trying to shout instructions upstairs and to the door. Good farcical acting isn't primarily about the business of slamming doors or dropping trousers, it's at its most affecting when just conveying panic at speed.
Like a lot of sitcom plots, the situation then has to escalate in the second part and gets less funny as a result, but Sid's attempts to cope with circumstances in the first half of this are to be cherished.
Its the simplest things that James does particularly well in this episode - especially when pressed into doing several things immediately, with the phone and doorbell ringing at once while his wife calls from upstairs. He turns around several times at speed considering which thing to do first, starts to walk up the stairs, gets called back downstairs, talks on the phone while simultaneously trying to shout instructions upstairs and to the door. Good farcical acting isn't primarily about the business of slamming doors or dropping trousers, it's at its most affecting when just conveying panic at speed.
Like a lot of sitcom plots, the situation then has to escalate in the second part and gets less funny as a result, but Sid's attempts to cope with circumstances in the first half of this are to be cherished.
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