The new Mrs. Slocombe, via Britbox Canada
If there were ever a show that merited the tired phrase, you couldn’t make something like that these days, it would have to be “Are You Being Served?” The 1970s-80s department store Britcom has background bimbos as a regular feature ( in a deeply pre-#MeToo set-up, as dubious ‘assistant’ and ‘nurse’ to the elderly store owner), as well as a main character, Mr. Humphries, who is (but isn’t only) an effeminate gay stereotype. There’s one episode where a Jewish employee scams people financially, another with blackface (although I don’t recall in what context, Britbox pulled that one). An older woman is represented, all right, in the form of Mrs. Slocombe… and the other characters are constantly making cracks about how old and fat she is.
If what I’ve described sounds terrible, consider also that it is maybe the best sitcom treatment of workplace dynamics and labor issues, and that young, lazy, horny, straight white men, as well as their older, pompous versions, come in for copious mockery as well.
The show is about the menswear and ladieswear floor of a stodgy London department store. The employees are intensely aware of where they rank, or would like to, in workplace and societal class hierarchies. The counter staff, whom the show centers on, are classier than (but not as well-compensated as) the unionized maintenance staff. They have their own internal hierarchies, and serve customers (aka have access to commission) in order of their own seniority. They all rank below, but just, a certain Captain Peacock, an insufferable man whose job is “floor walker,” which is to say, he’s something like a restaurant host, but for a floor of a department store. He takes the entire thing, and himself, very seriously. Above Peacock is middle management, represented by Mr. Rumbold, a jovial man incapable of understanding the goings-on of the departments he supervises. Then there’s the owner, Mr. Grace, a frail Hugh Hefner wannabe. If the show intrigues, read more about it here, or better yet, watch it!
The mystery, then, is why, in 2016, Derren Litten, creator of “Benidorm,” thought to remake “Are You Being Served?” Or not a mystery—Litten explained his reasons (pays the bills, etc.) on his blog. Unlike the 1990s revival with original cast members, this version was only ever the one episode, I guess because it is, despite a lot going for it, objectively borderline unwatchable.
Subjectively, however, how could I resist? The actress who plays Joyce Temple-Savage, the haughty manageress from “Benidorm,” is Mrs. Slocombe, and it works! It shouldn’t but it does. She brings a Lucille Ball energy, which means it’s not pure mimickry of the original. And Monty on “Benidorm,” Joyce’s hapless paramour-turned-husband-and-employee, is the true essence of Captain Peacock. They both seem a bit stuck in their “Benidorm” roles, but it somehow lines up.
Where does it go wrong? Mostly it’s Mr. Humphries, who’s more of a Nathan Lane type than a John Inman one. He’s bitter and snarky, but not charming. Mr. Humphries needs to be infinitely charming. Oh well. Also the choice to set the show in 1988, which just seems forced, not least because we have seen these characters in the 1990s. Then there’s the revival’s frustrating tendency to build up a joke and then get the timing all wrong. Mrs. Slocombe’s “pussy” is mentioned, which instead of getting double-take glances from colleagues receives full-on belly laughs from the character who plays a Mr. Lucas replacement, as though what’s needed is a stand-in for the audience, as though the audience could not be trusted to get that this is meant to be funny. Worse yet, there’s a pitch-perfect innuendo dialogue between Mrs. Slocombe and Miss Brahms (played by a minor, early-season “Benidorm” actress), something about a handsome tennis player’s “balls,” and… the script can’t just leave it. It instead has to be painstakingly spelled out that this is about tennis balls you see and not testicles. Why?? “Benidorm” would never.
But this could have been something! “Bendorm” sort of drifts into a workplace comedy as the seasons progress, becoming less about the vacationers themselves and more about the hotel (and hotel hair salon) staff. I’m not sure it needed to, but it does, and remains funny in that capacity. (Is Kenneth a modern-day answer to Mr. Humphries, without any of the coy, is-he-or-isn’t-he quasi-closetedness, instead swinging farrrr in the other direction? Discuss.) So a new “Are You Being Served?” might have worked on that level.
But… what if the sensibilities themselves are all wrong? Is it that the episode didn’t know what to do with, well, 2016?
It seemed correct to at last have a non-white main cast member (and I do not say this merely because Mr. Conway, the Mr. Lucas replacement, is also a significant improvement in the handsomeness department). This was already a move underway with minor characters in later seasons of the original, and it would have if anything been more of a statement not to do so. What did not seem remotely correct is to have Mr. Conway, the only new main character, function as a pseudo-representative of the contemporary, a sort of outsider looking on, watching an 1980s sitcom and indeed the 1980s themselves from the perspective of someone who finds the whole thing amusing but does not feel personally implicated.
Meanwhile 2016 Mr. Humphries is tragic, in a way that I guess is meant as a nod to 1988, but… the original Mr. Humphries is just another colleague, well-liked by his peers, and overall pleased with life.
And just generally, it’s unclear where in time the show sits, or how it feels about 1988, whether it looks back with smug superiority or nostalgia. Ambiguity can be fine! But joke-spelling-out, not so much.