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Are You Being Served?
1972 · TV series · 30 min episodes · 10 seasons
Created by David Croft, Jeremy Lloyd
This comedy series, which follows the exploits of employees at London's fictional "Grace Brothers" department store, is full of sexual innuendo, slapstick, visual gags, and double entendres. Much of the show's humor parodies Britain's class system, and many of the show's characters are based on stereotypes of the period, including the effeminate Mr. Humphries and the rich, but stingy, store owner.
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6 comments on Hacker News
'Murican sitcoms seem primarily to be written for lowest common denominator with laugh track and all. Occasionally, you get a show written at a smarter level where most people totally miss the comedy, but they tend to last 1-2 seasons at most because of it. So I have a rule on streaming content that if it is a network sitcom with lots of seasons, I'm not going to watch it.
*Just to mention, I grew up on BBC in America on my local PBS station with shows like Red Dwarf, Black Adder, Are You Being Served, Keeping Up Appearances, Father Ted, etc. That probably explains my dislike for sitcoms
The composer you mention was the most prolific and talented creator of BBC TV show themes: Ronnie Hazlehurst. He usually did arrangement and production of the music as well.
Other famous themes he created: Are You Being Served?; Last of the Summer Wine; The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin; To the Manor Born; Yes, Minister (and Yes, Prime Minister); Blankety Blank; and The Generation Game. See his Wikipedia page for the full list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronnie_Hazlehurst
AFAIK, the main reason that he received no royalties is because BBC programmes generated no income. The BBC's commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, generates revenue through selling and licensing content, but that was created in the 1990s. I don't know whether the royalties situation has changed, but I doubt it.
So Hazlehurst wasn't well paid, nor were the recordings well funded. This is another great example of constraints triggering innovation: the theme for Are You Being Served? memorably uses the sounds of coins and cash registers, which was Hazlehurst's solution to not being able to afford proper percussion.
If you have two spare minutes now, watch Matt Berry's lovely tribute to Ronnie Hazlehurst, from Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ui1rdhQljU
"Serve" have multiple meanings.
The title of the TV series "Are You Being Served?" refers to a customer receiving sales service from the store.
However, Grace Brothers (the aforementioned store) exists to make a profit for the "Old" and "Young" Misters Grace, so in that respect the company serves its owners.
The former use of "serve" is subordinate to the latter. Indeed, a widely held view is that a company serves its shareholders, and the goal of the company is to maximize shareholder wealth.
If this means using greenwashing or other forms of deceit to falsely persuade the public that the product isn't harmful, then go ahead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing
If it means ExxonMobil uses PR techniques, funding, and lobbying to discredit global warming research and limit restrictions on its ability to make money for its shareholders, then go ahead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_denial
If it means persuading governments to grant tax breaks and other subsidizes for cheap fossil fuel, making most of the population dependent on continual cheap fossil fuel with no easy way to wean themselves off, then go ahead. Lock-in is great for shareholder wealth.
That's who those companies serve.
It's worth watching Are you being served? (it's a comedy from the 70s available on BritBox). American department stores are not socially the same as the fictional Grace Brothers, but the idea for the store is pretty much the same.
But the last two words in your quote are "United States."
PBS, like all distributors, licenses content from producers of content--sometimes PBS is the producer, often it is not--for distribution inside a defined territory.
For example, Doctor Who, Red Dwarf, Downton Abbey, and Are You Being Served are all British TV shows licensed by PBS for distribution in the US. PBS can't stream them worldwide same as the BBC can't show some of the content it distributes outside of the United Kingdom.
Interestingly, I was introduced to Hugh Laurie by way of Blackadder.
When I wan in high school our local public television satiation (WILL) would run episodes of several 1970s and 80s british sitcoms. Among them were Blackadder, Are you being Served? and Fawlty Towers.