Come Back Mrs. Noah

I read an article in 'Dreamwatch' magazine a good few years back which included the lines; "Science fiction and comedy are difficult to mix. For every 'Red Dwarf', there are about ten 'Come Back Mrs.Noahs'. At which point I fell on the floor laughing. "Come Back Mrs.Noah' wasn't intended to be science fiction comedy! I'm sure Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft would be the first to admit that.

The premise is this; Mollie Sugden plays 'Mrs.Gertrude Noah', a prize-winning housewife on a tour of a British space station ( ! ). Unfortunately, there's an accident and said station is blasted out of orbit, beginning a course that will take it out of the Solar System. Rescue is, for the moment, impossible. Also on board are two scientists played by Michael Knowles and Donald Hewlett, and Ian Lavender as a news reporter.

The humour is crude and coarse; for instance, when in the first episode Mrs.Noah becomes weightless, the ship's computer advises her to propel herself forward by means of expelling natural body gas. Farting, in other words. Instead she takes a bottle of perfume from her handbag and uses that to do the same. If 'Grace Brothers' had been a space station instead of a department store, this is what it would have been. But what do you expect from Lloyd and Croft?

There were also a number of scenes back on Earth with Tim Barrett as the harassed head of the British space exploration centre and Ann Michelle as his sexy assistant. Spoof news broadcasts read by Gorden Kaye prefaced each edition. Great comedy? Absolutely not! But its not as half as bad as F.Gwynplaine McIntyre makes out. I think we should be allowed to see it for ourselves so we can make up our own minds. Besides, after the fiasco of 'Hyperdrive', could anything possibly be worse?

Although not quite the worst comedy programme in the entire history of English television, 'Come Back, Mrs Noah' is well down to the bottom of the barrel: rather surprising, this is, when you look at its credits. (The credits are the ONLY part of this series worth looking at.) The show was scripted by David Croft and Jeremy Lloyd, the comedy geniuses behind 'Are You Being Served?' and 'Grace and Favour'. The lead role of Mrs Noah is played by Mollie Sugden, who was so memorable (and funny) as Mrs Slocombe in those two classic sitcoms. But 'A.Y.B.S.?' and its sequel are prime examples of ensemble shows: here, Sugden proves she can't carry the comedy all by herself. (She had a similar problem in another Britcom, 'That's My Boy', in which her Oop North accent left her miscast as a homesick Londoner.)

'Come Back, Mrs Noah' has precisely the same premise as the grossly overrated 'Gilligan's Island': a motley group of characters are stranded in a remote place and can't get home. Imagine if 'Gilligan's Island' was set in outer space and Mrs Howell was the central character in every episode ... and you'll see why 'Come Back, Mrs Noah' is so dead awful.

Mrs Noah (Sugden, playing a role almost exactly like Mrs Slocombe) is one of several characters who are trapped in a space station orbiting Earth. This series runs up against the same problem that plagued 'Gilligan': in order to come up with new plotlines, the writers must introduce guest characters as visitors to the series' isolated setting (Mrs Noah's space station, Gilligan's island), and then the writers must figure out how to get the visiting characters out again at the end of the episode without rescuing the regulars. Who cares?

'Come Back, Mrs Noah' is stupefyingly unfunny. The 'best' thing about this show is its theme song, which (interestingly) is played at the END of each episode, not the beginning. Unfortunately, this theme song is just catchy enough that it lodges in my head every time I hear it, and it won't go away for several weeks. Whenever I want to watch any show that comes on immediately AFTER a repeat of 'Mrs Noah', I always make certain to skip the first minute of the show I want to watch, so that I won't risk hearing the theme song of this terrible show.

Agreed , COME BACK MRS NOAH is not a classic comedy ,in fact it's rather laughless but it's nowhere as bad as many people have made out and I certainly wouldn't put it in the same league as unfunny patronising crap like ALL ABOUT ME .

The problem lies with the format of a bunch of people being stranded aboard a space station and trying to rescue them . It should be pointed out that most of the humour comes from a special effect identical to the Ice Warrior death effect in DOCTOR WHO of peoples faces " shimmering " as they blast out of orbit . This happens in nearly every episode and wasn't very funny the first time it happened so goodness knows why the production team thought there was a lot of mileage from this . There's also a very formulaic idea of having a piece of technology take centre stage in every episode . For example there's a VR machine that Mrs Noah tries that has her believe she's at a wrestling match . If the budget had existed then we might have seen the title character sitting in a wrestling hall but we are talking BBC budget here which means the joke involves Mrs Noah in the space station shouting " Go on tear his arm off ! " . There's another episode featuring a computerised tea making machine . Come on how many laughs will that cause ? Not too many if you hadn't have guessed

So in space no one can hear you laugh because the ideas are severely limited and the casting doesn't help since Sugden will always be known as Mrs Slocombe , Ian Lavender will always be known as Private Pike while Hewlett and Knowles will always be known as the two snobbish officers from IT AIN'T HALF HOT MUM and you're instantly reminded of better things the cast have appeared in . As I said it's short on laughs but there seems to have been a bit of a bandwagon over the years making out this is the worst comedy the BBC has ever produced . Despite being unfunny and unsophisticated it's not that bad , it just had the misfortune to be produced during the golden age of BBC comedy

It genuinely feels like Mrs Slocombe has left Grace Brothers for a holiday, and instead of going to the Costa Plonka (the movie) she's gone to a space station. Her character Gertrude Noah wins a cookery prize and gets a chance to visit a British Space craft, set to travel into Space for sixty years, however a mix up sees Mrs Noah sent into space with some other unsuspecting people.

It's crass, bawdy, with the toilet humour exclusive of the seventies, if it's not your bag, you will utterly loathe every second of it, if you enjoy it, then there are laughs, gags and double entendres aplenty for you.

Borrowed jokes, horrific props, the worst special effects you could hope to see, but it does boast Mollie at her peak, and she manages to make it watchable, even if it IS Mrs Slocombe in space. All that's missing is the Are you being served cash register sound during the changes of scene.

It seems like Are you being served made stars of the cast, and nobody quite knew what to do with them after it, all of whom seemed to deserve better.

I can't help but snigger when I watch this show, I don't know if it's the script, or embarrassment, but to class it as the worst British sitcom of all time is unfair.

They tried something different, they didn't quite get it right, but Come back Mrs Noah is unique, and worth a look.

5/10.

I was only 8 when this was originally aired and it passed me by completely, but on a recent trawl through sitcoms and comedy shows of my youth I gave this a watch and was pleasantly surprised.

Mollie Sugden is hilarious as Mrs. Noah, a Northern housewife stranded in orbit on board a space station. It won't appeal to everyone, it's very much of its time with its slapstick and bawdy, seaside postcard humour but I was raised on this kind of comedy and it ticked all the right boxes for me. The special effects are hilariously awful, adding to the comedy. They obviously knew this would be the case with their budget and the shows premise and leaned hard into it, and it works a treat. Highlights are a huge robotic chicken and space suits with breathing tubes that contain ping pong balls.

The rest of the cast all deliver but Joe Black as the put upon dogsbody Garstang is a particular joy.