Hinge and Bracket enjoy a well-deserved cult following in the UK for their extraordinary act. This consists of two quite obviously camp men pretending, with staggering verisimilitude, to be two bickering elderly spinsters who perform as a musical duo. Dame Hilda Bracket and Dr Evadne Hinge are singer and accompanist respectively, inhabiting a world of old-fashioned gentility in the fictional home-counties village of Stackton Tressell. It is difficult to convey the essence of their brilliant act, but it arises both from the tension between their creators' real and assumed identities, and that between the sexless gentility of their surroundings and the raunchy innuendo of their catty exchanges. "Dear Ladies" was an attempt to distil their stage act into a situation-comedy format. I was an avid admirer of the show when it was originally screened, but have not had the opportunity to re-view it, since it has never, to the best of my knowledge, been repeated. (I sincerely hope that the videotapes have not been wiped.) I do recall, however, that it was one of the most consistently hilarious comedy shows I have ever seen, and I would dearly love to see it again.
