DVD Reviews

Nearest and Dearest: The Complete Second Series | 18-12-2005 12:00

  
You may suspect, having seen this review being one of a British sitcom and with my name at the foot of this page, that, like Terry And June, It Ain't Half Hot, Mum, Man About The House and George And Mildred before it, that this will conclude with a view that Nearest And Dearest isn't bad but that it hasn't aged awfully well. It isn't that this conclusion isn't valid here, more that comedy is never as easy to predict as that and that Nearest And Dearest, although it exhibits many of the very worst aspects of British sitcoms, has, as they would say round these parts, grown into its face quite well.

The show, which was first broadcast in 1968 with this season coming in July and August of the year after, concerns the death of Joshua Pledge and his leaving of his pickling company to his two middle-aged but unmarried heirs - Eli (Jimmy Jewel) and Nellie Pledge (Hylda Baker). As in Joshua's life, Pledge's Purer Pickles is a rundown affair with the bank account holding little over £9 17s, whilst the warehouse stores all that you might expect - onions, gherkins, cauliflower and beetroot - none of which, cash excepted, is taken with much grace by Eli and Nellie. Worse, though, is that the pair cannot stand one another and as they move back to their home in the north-western town of Colne, they bicker, fight and strain to live in the same house, with Nellie's 4'10" battleaxe bristling at the very thought of Eli being a boozing, leering philanderer.

Adding to the chaos at Pledge's Purer Pickles were Stan (Joe Gladwin), who's horse Storm was the company's equivalent of a delivery van, as well as Lily (Madge Hindle) and Walter (Eddie Malin), the Pledge's cousin and her aged, near-comatose husband who says nothing, looks forever on the edge of dribbling and who struggles with a weak bladder, which prompts Nellie to ask him, "'ave you been?" With Nellie concerning herself with improving her standing in Colne and Eli only bothering with his standing at the bar, they do form something of a consensus with their bid to keep Pledge's Purer Pickles in business. But even in Lancashire, times, unlike the pickles themselves, are hard and the Pledges sometimes resort to desperate measures to keep their business afloat.

It's no fault of Nearest And Dearest but we do tend to associate everything from the sixties with the legend of the decade as being one that swung. Indeed, I made reference to this in reviewing The Knack...And How To Get It and in keeping that in mind, it's almost necessary to keep repeating to oneself whilst watching this that it only dates from 1969. The Beatles were a year away from formally breaking up, Woodstock had been and gone and the sixties were about to come to an end with the killing of Meredith Baxter at Altamont and yet over a fuzzy black-and-white picture, the British were laughing themselves into a tizzy over a double entendre that appears to see a man referring to something about his groin - it could be any or all of his penis, testicles or backside - as being pineapple chunks. Other than an occasional mention of something from the popular culture of the time, such as Mick'n'Marianne, this could well have been a product of the decade before so innocent is it. A brother and sister living together? We look back on this with a more knowing eye and look for suggestions of incest but, no, there's simply nothing other than the tale of a brother and sister living in the same house with one being lucky with the ladies whilst the other bothers herself with her social standing, only to be let down by the cheap elastic that she uses, which fails to keep her knickers up - no complexity, no darkness and no subtext.

Fortunately, though, for a comedy, there's no real shortage of laughs either. I suspect, even as I laughed at it, that some of this may well be to do with the shades of Nearest And Dearest within the work of Peter Kay. Although this may be nothing more than their sharing of a Lancashire accent, there's something in the richness of the dialogue that is particular to the north-west, something in the way they manage to say, "Eh...ya daft bugger!" quite unlike anyone else, making it as much an insult as a term of endearment, often at the same time. The frustration felt by Nellie at her poor standing in Colne is on a par with that felt by Brian Potter at the lack of interest in the Phoenix Club with there being little the pair of them can do to turn things about, whilst Eli, who's none too interested in Pledge's Purer Pickles, has, literally, his ups and downs with the opposite sex as did Paddy, both in Phoenix Nights and Max And Paddy's Road To Nowhere. Even the name of Pledge's Purer Pickles has something of Kay about it, leaving Nearest And Dearest being a show one generation before Kay began in television.

There are, though, big differences between this and the work of Kay, mostly to do with this being from a much more innocent time. Vince Powell was on the team of writers and although Nearest And Dearest tends to steer clear of the kind of writing that would blight his later Love Thy Neighbour and Mind Your Language, the torrent of double entendres would be enough to make a vicar blush. And yet, these couldn't be any more surreal had Dali and Bunuel been hired as script consultants with Nearest And Dearest connecting absolutely anything and everything with sex. As much as it does still raise genuine laughs, there's also the question of, "Why am I laughing at this?" as yet another character makes reference to his penis through mention of plum pudding, a lamppost, marmalade or his neighbour's extension. Maybe they are just referring to pineapple chunks on mentioning them but the manner in which the studio audience howls with laughter, and the laughter-track is included, suggests otherwise. Indeed, said audience sounds close to passing out entirely during the confusion that surrounds Nellie's conversation with a prostitute following her arrest for shoplifting in a sketch in A Breach Of The Peace , which is much too long-winded to reprint here. Suffice to say, they both believe they're talking about the same thing but the prostitute is aghast at not only Nellie's age but at her doing it in a supermarket aisle between the veg and the potted condiments.

An equal amount of the humour in the show comes from the malapropisms offered by Nellie, who's forever twisting her sentences into such nonsense as to challenge Lewis Carroll. Much later, homage would be paid to Hylda Baker by the rise of another Hilda in the North-West - Hilda Ogden, whose dusting of her muriel would be the exactly the kind of line that the writers of Nearest And Dearest would have loved to have had been said by Nellie Pledge.

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Episode Guide

A Breach Of The Peace (25m31s): Eli Pledge is a pillar of the community, or so he would have us believe, so imagine his horror when he receives a visit from two policemen...with Nellie in tow, whose drawers are about her ankles. An idea for the promotion of their pickles turned into a charge for shoplifting and a visit to the local courthouse.

Wish You Were Here (26m08s): Majorca or bust? Bust actually, as the Pledges, in an episode that would be adapted for the 1972 feature film of Nearest And Dearest, enjoy a week in Blackpool what with Eli having spent their holiday savings. The guesthouse in which they're staying hasn't had the sheets cleaned from their last visit and just when it couldn't get any worse, Lily and Walter walk through its front door, saying that they're in Blackpool for their second honeymoon and hoping to recapture the magic. Eli wonders if Walter had any magic in the first place.

The Demon Drink (26m24s): We've all been there...the morning when we wake to say, "No more! Never again!" and now it's the turn of Eli Pledge to swear off the booze. But Pledge has never been far from the boozer and his liver has long since gotten used to a certain amount of background alcohol so it may be that drink isn't to be feared, more the shakes from withdrawal.

All You Wish Yourself (24m40s): In another episode that would be adapted for the 1972 feature film, it's Nellie's birthday and after serving her breakfast in bed, Eli suggests a night out in the Starlight club with Lily and Walter. But what starts out as a quiet drink turns into something else as the lights dim, Eli and Walter go quiet and the girl on the stage slowly removes her gloves. But something about her looks familiar to Nellie...

Now Is The Hour (23m32s): Pledge's Purer Pickles faces a problem - with everyone else having died whilst they were on the job, they must now think of their first retirement as Stan and his cart-horse think about leaving. Neither Eli nor Nellie know quite what to do...how do you say farewell to their delivery man and his less-than-reliable transport.

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Transfer

I doubt if Nearest And Dearest has been kept in the best of condition over the years and it shows, with the picture looking soft, damaged in places and with variable contrast. Of course, this is a television show and not a film and it wasn't routine for production companies to look after their programme archives in the same way that a Hollywood studio would and in some respects we're kind of fortunate to have it at all. The original mono audio track, like the picture, shows its age with there being a background hiss throughout as well as various intermittent pops and clicks. There are, however, no subtitles.

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Extras

As with other British sitcom releases from Network, there are no extras on this release.

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Overall

Yet I can't help but feel that I've gilded the lily somewhat with this review, enjoying the show but knowing that the age of the writing and of the production will put most people off Nearest And Dearest. It is funny but it is an acquired taste and will, I'm sure, be of little interest even to those whose tastes stretch back as far as Terry And June or Are You Being Served?, stalwarts of the seventies both but noticeably more recent than the peculiarly pickled comedy of this.