"29 Acacia Avenue" is a undemanding domestic comedy aimed at lower middle-class British audiences - the cinematic equivalent in its day of a popular three-act play ('Scene: A Drawing Room') performed at the local repertory theatre. Not only the subject-matter and handling but also the slightly stagey acting prompt this comparison. Alternatively, it might be viewed today as a forerunner of various cosy TV sitcoms concerning good-natured but anxious parents trying to cope with the emotional lives of grown-up children still living at home.
The father of the family and inevitable comic lead is Mr Robinson (played by Gordon Harker), a lugubrious bowler-hatted commuter who gets very upset by next-door's dog digging up his begonias. He and his wife feel compelled to keep up with the neighbours in respect of holiday plans, even though they would really prefer their traditional week at Bognor Regis to a Mediterranean cruise. 'I'm not so keen on these foreign parts,' admits Mr Robinson.
And can young Peter and Joan be trusted to behave themselves while Mum and Dad are away? Maybe not. Naive Peter (Jimmy Hanley) gets himself entangled with a seductive older woman, while Joan and her fiancé Michael fret at the frustrations of being engaged ('like driving a car with the accelerator and the brake on at once'). Even Shirley the maid (Megs Jenkins) wonders just how far she should go with her boyfriend Fred ('Have you ever known ecstasy, my girl?'). In 1945, all this contemplation of pre-marital sex must have seemed very daring. To modern eyes, of course, it is tame indeed.
The other standard comic component is class. The Robinsons are lower middle-class folk on their way up (on a par with the Gibbons family in 'This Happy Breed', made the previous year). The children are rather posher than their parents - Joan (Jill Evans) has obviously had plenty of elocution lessons! - but even they feel occasional unease when they get themselves attached to confidently upper middle-class partners. Fine wines, butlers, and family silver are outside their experience. The humour is gentle and thoroughly predictable, yet "29 Acacia Avenue" certainly offers some glimpses into English social attitudes of the 1940s (though the action takes place in a London suburb where World War II apparently never impinged).
