I remember reading once that Jack Smethurst agreed to play Eddie on the condition that his role would be the one to be made to look like a fool. R.I.P Jack, and thanks for the laughs.
The Alf Garnett series 'till death us do part' and 'in sickness and in health' were incredible especially when 'Marigold' (eamonn walker) was in it... hysterical.
FYI: This version was actually an unbroadcasted Pilot Episode! When the actual series aired, Episode 1 was virtually the same, but the actress on this Pilot Episode (Gwendolyn Watts), playing Eddie's wife 'Joan', was replaced with another actress (Kate Williams). Also a 'cut' has been made when Eddie mistakes Bill as a removals man - Bill says 'Mr Booth I’m your new neighbour', Eddie says 'bloody Nora, I’ve been integrated..!'
It's great to see that Rudolph Walker is still going strong in Eastenders (very long running British soap) and still has a wonderful, sexy West Indian accent.
When this first came on the TV, I was nine and we had a family in our road who was then called half castes, bloody awful! I grew up with them as my friends, my parents didn't care as they were are playmates and my parents were not racist. So it took a question from a innocent 9 yr old to my neighbours mum to ask why our friends weren't invited to my neighbours birthday party, they got invited. Everyone talked about the show at school but my multiracial friends weren't allowed to watch it. My Dad hit that on the head as he made sure that they watched it with us. Standing alone it hit a hell of a lot of racism on the head in this country. Thank god for that!! When Harry and Megan accused the British people and press of racism it finished their reputation over here.
I'm a 60 year old Australian, and first watched this show when I was in my teens.. What a funny show! It pushed boundaries, as the series develops, they added great characters like Jacko (I'll have a half! You'll get the reference later). This was the pilot. They changed houses and also changed the actress who played Joan. Enjoy this gem.
Sidney Poitier, who Bill was referring to died on 6 January aged 94 and Jack Smethurst, who played the main character Eddie died last week on 16 February aged 89, RIP.
A bit curious about this episode. It is not S1E1. The actress playing Eddie's wife Joan is not the actress who played her in the series. The houses where where they live are not the houses they live in for the rest of the series. I wonder if this pilot episode was ever actually broadcast? There is a playlist here on youtube which contains all the actual episodes from the series. If this series interests you I suggest watching some of them. They are actually quite well written and funny. The conversation with his wife that you didn't understand. The Common Market is the European Economic Community EEC, predecessor of the European Union, which the UK was about to join. Transport and General Workers is the Transport and General Workers Union and Jack Jones was an official of that trades union. Eddie is a socialist, a trades unionist and votes Labour. Bill is a Conservative voter. This series is not racist. The wives become the best of friends and Eddie and Bill are always bickering but Eddie always comes out the fool. This pilot episode was probably made in 1971. The first episode of the series was first broadcast in May 1972.
This pilot episode was NEVER actually shown in the UK back in 1972, however the 1st episode of the series was virtually identical, slightly re-written with a different actress playing Eddie's wife Joan, this pilot episode played by Gwendolyn Watts but the entire series played by Kate Williams
I have Love Thy Neighbour on DVD, this episode is included on series 1. The line that was cut when Eddie realises that Bill is his neighbour and not the furniture remover is "Bloody Nora", he uses this catchphrase throughout the series.
Yes, I think that line was cut when the company who produced the DVDS cut out the advert break captions (the "End of Part One" and "Part Two" on screen in order to make the episode a continious thing.
The all time classic, watched by over 20 million in its day between 1972 - 1976 and sadly we have just lost Jack Smethurst (Eddie Booth) aged 89 only last week
This was a huge show on 60's British TV. The actor who played Eddie was called Jack Smethurst. He was, like me, from a small village suburb of Manchester England, called Blackley. My family only lived around half a mile from him. I used to see him around and about all the time back then. I even went to school with his nephew..
RIP: Jack Smethurst (who played bigot Eddie Booth) 9th April 1932- 16th February's 2022. Condolences to his family he was 89. Yes, this was literally just six day ago!
I remember as a kid watching this it was funny then and it is still funny now. Programs like this helped to change the mind set of a lot of people. The writing was very cleaver, you could see the bigotry and how both sides behaved. The wife of the Eddy was changed to a different actress but the writing went on just as good. There were other shows if you haven't seen it already check out Till Death do us part with Warren Mitchell. A great actor of his time and a great show.
The funny thing I always thought happened in the show was that the white guy was made to look the fool. In actual real life, both actors where good friends.
This is from a time before liberalism became woke leftist activism and an attempt by the liberal middle classes to prepare and "educate" the white working classes for mass immigration by showed up the idiocy and incredible ignorance behind racism in a humorous self deprecating way. The fact that it came to be seen as racist itself, after the nation was anything but racist, is absolute proof of the lunacy and illiberal hypocrisy behind liberal progressive wokedom and just how damaging it is and has been to real race relations and equitable society. We were much better off 20 years ago, before political correctness decided we were all racist bigoted white supremacists despite living peacefully and with equality in a multicultural society for decades.
I'm white and my white brother was a welcomed member of Liverpool's Caribbean club. The Caribbean community where well liked. The people that the Caribbean community had a problem with (Not of their making) where the muslin Somalis. The Somalis looked down on the Caribbean community.
@@davidfaulkner4760 You can't put that many different groups together and expect it to work out well. There's a bloodbath coming, probably of white people, it's what they wished for, asked for, and ultimately deserve I guess.
Woke leftist activism was going on in that time period but it was all false smiles and is one reason Malcolm X said the white liberal was not to be trusted as they weren't as benevolent as they were making themselves out to be.
I grew up watching this , the good thing was both sides gave as good as they got. My garden at my bungalow was cleared out before I moved in !! Plants, pots ,garden ornaments .🤷🤷 Only 2 years ago .!!!
I remember my grandad watching this when I was only little and my Nan coming on and having a go at my grandad for putting it on with us my mom went mad my dad found it hilarious.
Hi Beard, incase you didn't know, England was mainly white until the late 1950's when a mostly black Caribbean's emigrated to the UK. There were newspaper stories in the 1970's saying the value of your house would fall if a black family moved in next-door. This show was a reaction to certain rhetoric's being pushed at the time, exposing and mocking ignorance.
*Mind Your Language* (1977-1986) which is also by *ITV* is a legendary sitcom, which as the title suggests is also about race, language and stereotypes. All the episodes are on RU-vid.
@@neilgrundy The 3 English characters were stereotypes too, the bumbling naive middle class teacher, the battleaxe feminist head and the 'cor bloimey guv' peasant janitor, funny how those who want to point fingers always miss that detail
Just wouldn't fly these days, this has been banned on British TV for over 30 years as being racist and highly offensive. Its just a pity people forgot the main white protagonist character (Eddie) is the one who ends up looking the fool every episode. The two wives actively combine to make sure he's the butt of all the jokes.
'It wouldn't fly' because the milieu of today's social engineers pick and choose when we are supposed to bark when our Pavlovian training is triggered.. Remove a child from state schooling, and later TV/state propaganda, and weaponized words and terms would have far less power, which just wouldn't do for the powers that shouldn't be. Lastly, let us not forget that political correctness was correctly explained by the murderous Rockefella lap dog Mao Tse tong, when he said "Political correctness is anything that is considered harmful to the communist party"
Eddie - Jack Smethurst - sadly passed away on the 16th of Feb - this role all but finished his career which is sad because like Warren Mitchell with Alf Garnett he always insisted that his character was poking fun AT the racists not siding with them
Exactly. I've often wondered why people can't see what comedies like this are doing. They're shining a light on unacceptable behaviour and views whilst being extremely funny.
I watched this as a kid. The white guy was working class - Trade Union Socialist - Labour Party. The black guy is middle class - Conservative. They were the opposite in everything. Great political satire on the day.
There's a great scene, in the movie George and Mildred, where George sees Jack Smethurst and Rudolf Walker having a drink at the bar, at the TV studios. When he describes Rudolf in the derogatory term used in the show, Jack tells him "you can't call him that". George replies "you do". Rudolf replies "Yes, but he gets paid for it". 😁
I can remember watching this as a kid and thought it was hilarious I can even remember my favourite episode, itwas in a later episode as they were became close friends, they decided to make some brandy in the garden shed, and ended up blowing the shed and half the garden up, it was so funny. The interplay between the two guys, just gets better and better as the series goes on as Eddie gets to know Bill better and better until eventually they are firm friends and have really funny adventures together, it was one of those TV shows that just shows the pointlessness and stupidity of racism.
@@dave_h_8742 Hardly surprising since weaponized race-identity politics are a practical and unfortunately effective way of keeping racial demographics more divided than they would be if they weren't put into the nefarious black/white dialectic. But whatever people want to call racism i.e 'ingroup preference' it is just as real on all sides as witnessed in studies where small children instictively gravitate toward people who look the most like them, truth is painful, but weaponized lying does far more damage, and that's just how the powers that shouldn't be want it.
@@leeboy2k1 'where small children instinctively gravitate toward people who look the most like them' If you mean by gravitating towards other children I totally agree.
@@elemar5 Other children who most resemble them in appearance.. not something perhaps we want to discover emotionally, but on the positive side there is more nuance between personality traits in humans than there are in ethnic traits, so as with everything objective, it gets complicated.
I do remember watching this as kid. Curry and Chips was another interesting show that only ran for a half a dozen episodes starred Spike Milligan, Eric Sykes and Kenny Lynch. I had the 'don't sound black' said to me, I did have a good laugh over that one.
1 name in the UK who is respected is Trevor McDonald. He was a news reader. He was the main newsreader in the UK in the 90s. I miss him telling us the news. He retired years ago.
Honestly, I can't believe this used to be broadcast....... how times have changed. One you really need to watch is "Till death Us Do Part", it has the most opinionated, bigoted, sexist loudmouth anywhere on TV, in any country. The main actor (Warren Mitchell) was simply brilliant playing the part. He was the complete opposite in real life
I think your assessment is correct. The language today isn't acceptable, but the central theme was about how similar the two couples are (both men being quite arrogant and pig-headed; the women down-to-Earth and getting on with each other) and in general the two men were the butt of the jokes, and Eddie's prejudice in particular being highlighted. In the 70s it wasn't common to have lead black characters on TV shows, and so this exposed a lot of people to a couple that were pretty much just like them. It's a smarter show than people who haven't seen it give it credit for.
In the club is slang for pregnancy. Two political parties in UK at that time were Conservative party for the toffs, privileged and the rich and Labour Party for working men and women
For context, it's possibly worth mentioning that the UK was virtually entirely white until the 1950s. Even in the 70s, for a large amount of the population, they would have rarely had any real contact with someone who wasn't white. The racism that existed was (unlike the USA, where the history of slavery plays a massive part) largely based on pure ignorance. Older generations had grown up old reading about black people in history books, depicting them as tribal, like Zulus, and people (ridiculous as it might seem) genuinely thought they would have spent their lives hunting with spears before coming to England.
Hmm..there were concentrations of black people, particularly sailors, in many of the major ports; Bristol, Liverpool, Cardiff etc..Ships could wait for months for their cargo to be unloaded, and many sailors set up home in these cities, marrying local girls. The second world war increased the number of Black sailors in this country, again marrying local girls, I am the off-spring of such a case. So, for some white British, black people were not uncommon.
@@terrythomas3755 Yes, the country was certainly not exclusively white. Away from the bigger/port cities though, a non-white face would be very rare. My mother, who grew up around Oxford in the 50s, said she was about 10 before she saw an actual black person. Even then though, there's seeing, and actually interacting with. In the Rising Damp episode reaction, there's a deliberately awkward moment when Richard Beckinsdale's character starts to say he's never had a black acquaintance before, which wouldn't have been that unusual in the 1970s.
@@terrythomas3755 A few hundred sailors waiting for their next ship in a port city is statistically zero in a country of 50 million which the UK was in 1950. Being an island, trading nation there have always been foreign visitors, they weren't citizens and the overwhelming majority of British people would never have seen or interacted with them. One or two exceptions doesn't change the fact of a homogeneous, ethnically white British population for the vast majority of the history of the British Isles until the last few decades of uncontrolled mass immigration.
true, my mum was born in 1961 and when she was about 7 her auntie brought a black man home and my mum had never seen one before and she can remember wanting to keep touching his hair because it was so different to everyone else's
RIP to Jack Smethurst who only just passed away very recently . . .. the 2 men, Jack & Rudolph were great friends during and after the show, too, Alan . . . and were always laughing at what they had to say or call each other from the scripts . . . basically 2 opposing racist views getting at each other all the time - just so as to take the piss out of all of the racists who were out there - (There was always a life lesson being taught in those days in all of the older sit-coms by their writers) . . . Another one just like this from about the same period was, "Mind Your Language" . . .
This was a great series, the beauty was that Bill always got the better of Eddie who was a stereotypical British working class guy of that era (the early to mid 70s)
Those who actually worked were not like that, when it came to personal friendships Etc. You can't work next to someone and not get to know and trust them. The same with the children in school.
Being the pilot a few things did change. The houses for 1, they moved the setting so the doors was touching so they could have close door conversations in 1 shot and easier to set up sets. Another change was Eddie's wife (the buffy the vampire pilot had a fat girl I stead of alyson hannigan). After the pilot they got an idea of what worked and the show just gets better. It was so successful enough they even made a movie out of it. The guy playing bill is still doing TV today on one of the most popular shows here, Eastenders.
I'm glad they changed both actress . Alyson was awesome as willow . Just how she says her lines and jokes in a geeky way . And that nervous bit about her . And the switch to Kate Williams I'n this was perfect the chemistry between her and Eddie was brilliant
@@clinteastwood8230 Eddies Wife in the Pilot reminds me of a mix of Penelope Kieth and Felicity Kendal, I actually wonder what happened to her as I think cast in the right role she could have been good as straight or comedy actress. The other good comedy (was it BBC? John Alderton and Hannah Gordon in My Wife Next Door)
@@highpath4776 she been in some carry on films .and other comedy shows like on the buses . The only John alderton show I know is please sir that's funny as long as you don't count the final series
This show was written as a response to the BBC’s Till Death Us Do Part which touched on very much the same issues. That show had been broadcast from 1965 - 75. It was famous for Warren Mitchell calling his on screen wife, played by Dandy Nichols, a “silly old moo”! It was the inspiration for the American comedy ‘All in the Family’.
The cut you mentioned @17 minutes 7 seconds is if the programme transmitted, a notice would have appeared showing ''End of Part One'' then there would have been a commercial break, then on resumption of the show, a notice would have appeared showing ''Part Two''. Hope that answers your question.
I was 13 years old when this series started on our screens in 1972. Acting and script writing weren’t particularly great, but a landmark series… a product of its time. I remember it well.
You're very perceptive about a lot of the nuances of this show, but to really appreciate how well it works, you have to see a number of episodes and situations they get into, and see how it all develops, with the main protagonists getting to have a genuine mutual respect for each other. They can give as good as they get and realise that they're not all that different from one another. The wives are usually the sensible ones who treat their husbands like a couple of silly kids whenever they kick off. Rather than promoting racism, it actually highlighted the stupidity of it to the point where it gets down to nothing but ridiculous name-calling on both sides. That's part of the humour, that some people never really got and would accuse the show of being racist as a result. Another show like this one, (that even gets a mention in one episode), is, 'Til Death Us Do Part/In Sickness And In Health', (one being the sequel to the other), where the same sort of thing is used to highlight the bigotry some people have. Except, with that show, it's just the one protagonist who's basically against anyone who isn't him! There's no holds barred as he goes on one of his rants, without everyone around him pointing out the ridiculousness of it all.
Amazing as it may seem this was regarded as enlightened at the time (early 70s) - the view was 'if it can be the subject of a comedy show then we must be past it'
Love thy Neighbour ran from 1972 to 1976. There was also a feature film, made in 1973, which was a box office hit in the U.K. Please check out the BBC show Till Death us Do Part, where the character Alf Garnett shares the same views as Eddie Booth, but unlike Eddie, Alf isn’t a Labour (Socialist - or Democrat in the US) supporter, but a Conservative supporter (Republican in the U.S). Till Death us Do Part was re made in the U.S. as All in the Family, with the Alf Garnett character renamed as Archie Bunker.
This pilot was never shown and the part of the racist's wife was recast for the actual series. The first proper episode is very similar to this script.
Watched this show as a kid back in the day …. And laughed my bollocks off … watched it again just now …. And laughed my bollocks off 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Great series, used to watch this with my parents. It was a great way of highlighting and taking the piss out of prejudices. You are definitely going to like this series Alan.
I've only ever seen this one episode so I'll be watching it for the first time on this channel. I think you'd like the Alf Garnett character in Till Death Us Do Part and In Sickness And In Health as well
@@stuwebb5727 the later series' mellowed a bit. It's the same as this though you're not supposed to laugh with Alf Garnett you're supposed to laugh at how ridiculous he is. Same as Rigsby the comedy is with his struggle fitting in with the modern world
This was a classic show in the 70s and 80s you must watch all the episodes shame that they will never be repeated again on TV but I have the DVD Box set.😁👍
Eddie's wife is replaced by a better actress for the entire run. It was recently properly remastered by Network home video in the UK last year uncut. Sadly the actor playing Eddie died last week aged 89... He was a superb actor, as far removed from the character he played as you could get.
This episode was from 1972. It was an extremely funny sitcom that showed the idiocy of racism and poked fun at the stereotypes and attitudes of both sides of the racism thing. Added to which they made the white guy a labour party supporter and the black guy a conservative supporter so it let the stupidities of politics also be parodied. The series ran from 72 to 76 and was very funny for the first couple of years at least. I don't remember seeing it much after that so not sure how it continued.
