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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 270206" data-attributes="member: 23">Seven episodes down. Just one remaining of Series One.Madeline Smith has been very enjoyable in the Hampton Wick saga which has run throughout. When I saw she was essentially the lead, my expectations were fairly low. I remember her best from Carry On Matron as the squeaky-voiced Miss Pullitt, whose concern over her baby's wonky thing put Joan Sims off her sausage. And I've seen her in small roles here and there. She's very pretty, but I associate her with vacuous bimbo roles. But as Henrietta Beckett, there's some substance along with the cleavage and legs. She gamely goes along with whatever scenario she ends up in that particular week, and comes across as very likeable.Barker's drunken Father Of The Bride speech is a classic:[MEDIA=youtube]BiP_vysgU5E[/MEDIA]With the humour all coming from the fact that it's a shotgun wedding, it's probably very outdated now. Nobody really bats an eyelid at a pregnant bride anymore. Indeed, I've attended weddings where the happy couples' children have held their mother's pure white wedding train.  I'm not even sure if it was a little out of touch in 1971, by which time I'd have thought attitudes towards sex before marriage were somewhat more liberal than a short time earlier. But it works because no matter what social attitudes may have been, we know that he's extremely uncomfortable with the situation and the more he tries not to talk about it the bigger the hole he digs. I'm sure this still happens today.Speaking of things that would not fly today, I feel almost certain that if it were to be shown on TV or iPlayer, the Beeb would feel compelled to protect our sensibilities by hiding The Short And Fat Minstrel Show segment from our view. It's all hypothetical, so I'll stop myself going into a rant about TV licences and how unhelpful revisionism is to cultural context (after all, the Beeb have at least made the DVDs available. For now). It's right that there should be some discussion and controversy around sketches like this, and that blackface has stopped being an acceptable form of entertainment. And I would hope there are many of us who have never found blackface funny or entertaining. For what it's worth, though, this sketch feels very much like it's coming from a genuine interest in all forms of variety. It's treated in the same way as drag or period drama. In context, The Black And White Minstrel Show was still airing new episodes at this point and would inexplicably continue to do so for the best part of a decade afterwards. To me, this sketch feels more like it's poking fun at the laziness and unoriginality of blackface in general and that series in particular, rather than endorsing it as valid. Whatever the intent, it's right that this should remain available as a stark reminder to us - and to disbelieving millennials - that society and the entertainment industry found this acceptable not so very long ago.</blockquote>

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