I know it was the basis for All in the Family
While I've seen Archie Bunker's name mentioned around these parts, it's only very recently when doing a bit of reading on
Till Death Us Do Part that I discovered he was analogous with Alf Garnett.
The
Till Death Us Do Part page on Wikipedia says "Archie was a tamer, watered-down version of his British counterpart"; "was portrayed as somewhat more likeable than Garnett"; and that his home setup "was one of [a] more private, cosier quality" which sounds about right from what I've seen of American adaptions of British sitcoms.
It's interesting to see that
All In The Family spawned numerous spin-offs which had spin-offs of their own. Alf Garnett being related to Bea Arthur's
Maude has blown my mind a little, and there's ironic humour to be found in this bigot of bigots being inadvertently responsible for "America's first African-American two-parent sitcom" (
Good Times) and "the second-longest-running series with a primarily African American cast... and the first [in America] to prominently feature a married interracial couple" (
The Jeffersons).
I don't think I've ever seen a whole episode of Till Death Do Us Part.
It's the same for me. I do remember the sequel series
In Sickness And In Health and I'm sure I would have watched bits and pieces of that. The theme song is very familiar, as are some of the characters such as Marigold, the black, gay neighbour. I don't think I realised until shortly after this that there had been an earlier series which featured Alf's "silly old moo".
My Mum had an aversion to the series. She thought Alf Garnett was a mouthpiece for ignorant bigots, and so presumably didn't get that the character was satirical and created to expose and mock said ignorant bigots.