Bless This House

The British TV Sitcoms of the seventies almost all had one thing in common: an inability to forecast changes in fashion and youth culture, and an instantly dated quality that created instant classics. Advice to all non-British surfers - catch this movie, it will give a better insight into life in the UK in the seventies than any more reputable source. Along with On The Buses, Porrige, and others, this movie stands out for great performances by Sid James (catch any Carry On.... movie he's in) , Diana Coupland, Sally Geeson and Robin Askwith as the disfunctional family that started it all!

Bless this house, was successful enough profitably and critically and commercially enough for ITV; the bosses at the corporation have it the green light to commission a feature film version made in 1972.

Robin Stewart who played Sidney's son in the tv series was absent so he was replaced by another Robin Askwith who was semi- famous due to his appearances in several low- budget arthouse movies which plagued cinemas at the time before finding fame as the lead in the cult sex comedy franchise ( confessions film series 1974- 1978).

In this uneven film version, the Abbott families lives continue as humdrumly as possible until Mike meets a local girl played by Carol Hawkins from the TV sitcom ( please Sir) and slowly they fall in love, whilst Sally Geeson and her group of environmentalists continue to pontificate their socio economic views at various conferences.

This Is an uneven sitcom film it introduces a few new situations and characters which weren't in the tv series and develops the relationships for the children the daughter and her environmentalist group coinciding with mike's wooing of the lady in waiting.

Overall: a few sight gags are funny a lot of it falls flat unfortunately the actors play their parts with alomp apart from Robin Askwith overreacting and hamming it up unhealthily. I'd say this is one sitcom family that should've stayed on the small screen where they belong.

1970's British light comedy based on a popular TV series.

It's soft, warming, harmless wallpaper. There's a lack of imagination about the whole thing - but it's gentle and inoffensive. The cast, including the minor roles, such as the waitress played by Wendy Richards, are familiar British situation comedy actors. It's that cosy familiarity that is the making or breaking of the piece. Making a film based on a TV series is rarely a good idea. What may be a pleasant half-hour spent at home while chatting to friends and family, can become stretched and dull over three times that length. There are plenty of better ways of passing the time than watching this damp squid.

Apr 2021

This is everything i expect from a classic british comedy, i never saw the series that this is based on, but the films works as a stand alone and apparently the events in this film were ignored when they went back to continue with the series.

Just great fun from start to finish, all the cast are your favourite faces and do a great job.

Really good fun family film, lets improve that IMDB score.

9 out of 10.

Ostensibly "Bless This House" is a cinema spin-off from a hit television sitcom, and a rapid one at that. But it can also be treated as a continuation of the "Carry On" film series, by far the most successful comedies in British screen history.

That cycle, already over 20 years old, was near exhaustion: too many of its repertory company were looking and feeling their years to remain funny in saucily physical capers. "Bless This House" guides them into middle aged domesticity without forfeiting all the "Carry On" spirit of mischief and misrule.

Behind the camera, the producer, director and composer were "Carry On" veterans too, though screenplay duties passed from the incomparably lewd Talbot Rothwell to Dave Freeman. The TV concept is intact: Sid James, too long in the tooth to chase girls, is now a modestly prosperous semi-detached suburban salesman. His taste for football and booze is constrained by his duties to a wife who wants more independence, a disheveled art student son and a naive schoolgirl daughter. The arrival of a stuffy next-door neighbour gives Sid more headaches, but after mild pratfalls and back chat, all ends well at the altar. "Animal House" it isn't.

James, now pipe smoking and cardigan, retains the most suggestive laugh on screen. Diana Coupland, a band singer turned actress, is a nicely supportive, sometimes indignant foil. As the simian son, Robin Askwith gives his buttocks less of a rhythmical workout than in the contemporary "Confessions" films. Sally Geeson, sister of Judy, squeaks and flaps as the idealistic daughter.

A ripe selection of character comedians surrounds the family, led by Terry Scott and June Whitfield as the new neighbors. They almost make the production a spin-off of their long-running marital sitcom as well, albeit Scott's film character is more pompous.

Allusions to hippiedom, Women's Lib and ecological doom-mongering (Geeson devours an Ehrlich-like tract called "Mankind is Doomed" and leads the Junior Anti-Pollution League) place the film firmly in the glamrock Seventies, but its core is pretty timeless domestic humour. Sid looks weary and too much under the cosh of domesticity at times, but his timing and delivery are crisp as ever. The move from TV allows more expansive slapstick and quicker storytelling; the spirit of the original, which ran till James's death four years later, is preserved.

Like the "Carry Ons", these sitcom spin-offs were critically derided when released. They look far better now. "Porridge" and "Dad's Army" are the cream; as on television, "Bless This House" is not in their league, but it remains a mildly funny and endearing time killer 30 years on, like "On the Buses" and "For the Love of Ada". It seemed this domestic kind of sitcom had been banished for ever by the pseudo-sophisticates and neophilias who run British television, but the success of BBC1's "My Family" (created by an American abroad) echoes the Abbotts in their tree-lined ITV avenue.