Dipsticks In Amsterdam
One of the most curious phenomena in the history of British comedy was movies based on sitcoms. This can perhaps be traced back to The Army Game ’s film spin-off, I Only Arsked! (1958), but it was the 1970s that saw its golden age (if you can call it that). Most of these movie versions paled in comparison to their TV counterparts, with many of them featuring recycled scripts or disorientating cast changes. Sometimes, they would offer something different to the TV show, such as Johnny Speight’s 1968 version of Till Death Us Do Part partly focusing on Alf Garnett’s war years. However, this difference usually meant the cast being supplanted outside their “sit” (often at the expense of the “com”) and sent on holiday, such as Holiday on the Buses , George and Mildred and, most notoriously, Are You Being Served? , where all the staff of Grace Brothers went abroad together! Although the sitcom movie spin-off was a dead duck by the 1980s, you could still see them repeated regularly ...