This particular episode didn't inspire much
laughter in me, but the density of detail in the costumes and properties was
consistently interesting to watch. It feels like a document from a very precise
point in time, when sixties fashions and styles have trickled down to everyone
and nothing that we recognise as being of the 1970s has yet started. Sandra's
boyfriend is wearing a collared red woollen top with a tie. Was that ever
really a thing?
It’s perhaps accentuated by being a story about the girls attempting to sell an antique commode, but there's a lot of old stuff on screen. The episode even begins with the flatmates going through their accounts, in what must be one of the last 'present day' scenes on British television to deal with pre-decimal currency. There's then a filmed sequence in Liverpool City Centre where most of the members of the public up and about that early are pensioners, who would have been children in Edwardian times.
I'm not sure that I've ever seen any sitcom scene at an auction where characters' gestures and expressions didn't mean that they end up unwittingly bidding for items. There's some unfortunate business with props of the porcelain po of the commode, which needed some more work - when one breaks we don't really see it smash or quite register that it has broken, while the replacement looks more like papier mache than porcelain. Perhaps a combination of the lack of a replacement and limited studio time? Its frustrating, in an episode that otherwise looks so detailed and right, that its the one prop that matters which hinders the programme.
It’s perhaps accentuated by being a story about the girls attempting to sell an antique commode, but there's a lot of old stuff on screen. The episode even begins with the flatmates going through their accounts, in what must be one of the last 'present day' scenes on British television to deal with pre-decimal currency. There's then a filmed sequence in Liverpool City Centre where most of the members of the public up and about that early are pensioners, who would have been children in Edwardian times.
I'm not sure that I've ever seen any sitcom scene at an auction where characters' gestures and expressions didn't mean that they end up unwittingly bidding for items. There's some unfortunate business with props of the porcelain po of the commode, which needed some more work - when one breaks we don't really see it smash or quite register that it has broken, while the replacement looks more like papier mache than porcelain. Perhaps a combination of the lack of a replacement and limited studio time? Its frustrating, in an episode that otherwise looks so detailed and right, that its the one prop that matters which hinders the programme.
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