STEVE HATCHER looks at some of the more obscure 1960s sitcoms.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on May 12th 2024

This week, STEVE HATCHER returns and we’re going to start a short occasional series in which STEVE talks about some of the more obscure or forgotten sitcoms of the 1960s.

Whilst we’re all probably rather over familiar with the more famous sitcoms of that era, the likes of HANCOCK”S HALF HOUR, STEPTOE AND SON, and DAD”S ARMY were all on TV during that decade, and rightly went on to become mainstays of the conversations we as a nation often have about the comedy of that era, we do sometimes neglect many of the lesser known TV comedies that were on during that rather innovative decade.

Several have, of course, been quite rightly forgotten because they were awful, and many suffer from the problem that is the bane in the lives of many archive TV enthusiasts, in that they were largely wiped, but, as STEVE explains, amongst the ones that do at least partially survive, there’s rather a lot of largely forgotten TV gold to be found.

Well, I say forgotten, but this week’s selection include several very familiar and even rather iconic TV sitcom titles, but I do sometimes suspect that even these are largely forgotten in the wider world as they are all from the nineteen sixties, were mostly shot in black and white, and haven’t enjoyed quite as much exposure over the years as some of the more well-known comedies of the 1970s have enjoyed as their repeats endlessly cycle around.

So today we’ll be talking about the demob happy BOOTSIE AND SNUDGE, the workplace trials of THE RAG TRADE, the domestic travails of MARRIAGE LINES, and the age old battles of GEORGE AND THE DRAGON, along with a few other shows that happen to get mentioned along the way.

STEVE’s drawn up a list of around fourteen of these kinds of shows for us to talk about, and, given that this first hour only covered around four of them, I suspect that we will be returning to the topic at least a couple more times as the year rolls along, so you’ve all got that to look forward to over the coming weeks.

PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.