ARE YOU ARE BEING SERVED?

UK, 1977, 95 minutes, Colour.

John Inman, Mollie Sugden, Frank Thornton, Trevor Bannister, Wendy Richard, Arthur Brough, Nicholas Smith, Harold Bennett, Arthur English, Karan David, Glyn Houston, Andrew Sachs, Sheila Staefel.

Directed by Bob Kellett.

This television spin-off of the very popular British television comedy series came out in the middle of the long season of the series, 1977, the series ranging from 1972 to 1985, with the same central cast over the many years. Many of them regrouped in 1992-93 for 12 episodes of Are You Being Served, Again? (And John Inman was in Australia in 1981 for16 episodes, with opera singer and actress June Bronhill, for Are You Being Served in Australia? (

The audience coming to this film without knowing anything of the television background will find a very broad comedy, very much in the music hall tradition, creativity with stereotypic characters, farcical situations and behaviour, more than a touch of caricature, a range of very obvious jokes, always very broad humour and plenty of innuendo. Which may illustrate the type of British humour on television in the 1970s, thinking of On the Buses, Up Pompeii… (And the director of this film, Bob Kellett, directed the film versions of Up Pompeii and Up the Front.)

For those familiar with the television series (and it has been continually repeated on streaming television over the decades), they will enjoy meeting up with all the familiar characters, especially John Inman’s Mr Humphreys and his deliberately mincing style, Mollie Sugden as Mrs Slovombe and her touches of snobbery and being unanimous about her opinions, Wendy Richards as the young assistant from the store, Nicholas Smith as the rather pompous superior, Frank Thornton with his roving eye, Trevor Bannister as the cheeky junior, Arthur Brough as the old man, Arthur English as the practical man who one-ups them all in this film, and some scenes with Harold Bennett as the owner of the store. They play on their familiar types all the way through.

However, while the film opens with the store and Sheila Staefel trying on hats, the plan is that they all go to Spain for a group holiday, the preparations, the photos and passports, at the airport, the hotel – where, of all people, Andrew Sachs with memories of Fawlty Towers is the manager this time of the hotel, having to deal with an uprising of terrorists, the guests having to stay in tents overnight, all the mixups with the tents, confusion with notes to each other, a huge toilet with all kinds of toilet jokes, and a final shootout with the Brits being victorious.

So, an enjoyably reunion of the Grace Brothers staff!