With a British mother, I know a little bit about these ancient TV shows as, living on a farm, we kinda ended up watching lots of them in mid-afternoon or weekends. I knew of this show, but hadn’t ever seen it, so it was with a strange mixture of apprehension and anticipation that I watched it. To begin with.
After a time, (two or three episodes of this seven episode disc), the show’s original naïve charm managed to win me over and I did end up quite enjoying this slice of life from the late 1960s. While the comedy is a little behind the times today, there are still those classic moments that work as well today as they did then. The misunderstanding is a continual theme throughout this series and easily the strongest and most used. However, there are those others in being caught doing something that seems perfectly normal when alone, but changes when accidentally viewed by one or more others.
There are also plenty of double entendres bandied about and sometimes surprisingly liberal humour given the age and community of the original airdates. Our series here is the very first season, in which we are introduced to our main protagonist in Patrick Glover, a thriller writer who lives with his two teenage daughters after an amicable divorce several years back. The family is also served by Nanny, who has become a sort of housekeeper and confidante after serving for years as the girls’ nanny. Between the four of them they also manage to broach that other ongoing stalwart of TV comedy, the Generation Gap. Our two liberated young women of 16 and 18 are wholly embracing the ‘60s and all that went with it (well, except for the drugs) while Dad just tries to understand them and their zany ways, while maintaining his own dignity amongst his writing peers.
As far as comedy goes it does start out a little feebly, but the above noted charm of the film and its place in the history and chronology of television must be taken into account. When this is brought to bear the show seems to leap ahead of other programming from that age with some rather saucy comments and themes that it would be difficult to get on the air these days (before 8pm anyway). Herein then is a groundbreaking series that paved the way for many like-minded TV series' of the ‘70s. Naturally, most of the ‘controversial’ humour is veiled behind guesswork by the audience, with subtle comments leaving us to put two and two together and thereby not only slipping easily into a TV slot, but making the gag funnier. This seems to always be the case when the joke is started and left for the audience to figure out, today as much as then. (Or is that just me laughing aloud to prove I’m smart enough to get the joke?).
At any rate, Father, Dear Father is a surprisingly funny series that managed to squeeze its way into my unwitting 21st century idiom of the sitcom. It has warmth behind the jokes and no one is being insulted to extract a cheap laugh from the audience; here the actual situation is what gives the characters their material and they all manage to work it considerably well. Also of note in this early series - when TV was being made on the back of what was previously the stage or the big screen – is the length of scenes. Most are single takes utilising one set with only rare edits or cutaways. There are probably three cameras running with the choicest screen shot utilised and it all plays out in one long string. This means the characters run straight over confused language, errors with props or jumbled lines and must occasionally ad lib. This adds a slightly different air to the series we don’t see today, when TV resembled live theatre to an extent. Our series' today are usually shot over a week, repeating take after take until a scene is perfect, and then polished to high art by the editing process (or so they think).
Father, Dear Father won me over long before the seven episodes had played out and the disc itself is what lets down this little slice of history as I shall now impart…
What an appalling transfer! Multiple instances of compression woes, misread code and wholly corrupted screens pepper the landscape. Being a black and white TV show from 1968 I can understand if the original stock is a little lacking and allowances can be made, but this is pure transfer woe. Umbrella usually do a pretty good job with this older stuff and I’ve never yet seen anything this appallingly mangled by the transfer.
The audio is a flat-fisted Dolby Digital mono track that does the job suitably, though it's in no way a perfect transfer. There are moments of background hiss and static almost beyond hearing, but overall it’s not all that bad considering. At least it does the job a bit better than the visual side of things. The music is very much of the period and wavers between ultra-modern (for 1968) and classic contemporary (for 1968) and is therefore quite apt for a series of this nature.
Extras come in the form of four biographies for the main cast of a couple of pages each (Patrick Cargill gets six) and Umbrella Propaganda for other series' in their collection. Trailers include Father, Dear Father Series Two, George and Mildred, Love Thy Neighbour and Man About the House.
The slipcase claims to also have the original broadcast ad caps, though these just look like the regular titles to me. There are also production notes inside the case, though these seem to have been written by someone with but a glancing appreciation of the show.
If you were a fan of this series years ago then this is probably the best the show will ever get treated on DVD and so I must recommend it. However, the transfer itself suffers multiple and innumerable bumps and jolts and unread-coded moments that are pretty disgraceful, even if the show is an older one. I’d perhaps be inclined to forward a letter to the distributors or Umbrella themselves and voice your dissatisfaction.
If I made DVD, I wouldn’t have let this leave the shop, I gotta say.
