333 Two's Company

First  viewed : 1978

I  think  I  only  caught  one  episode  of  this  series  which  my  mum  and  sister  liked  but  I  thought  was  awful.

The  premise  was  that  a  pretty  ghastly  New  York  writer  Dorothy  ( Elaine  Stritch )  is  holed  up  in  London  and  hires  an  upper  crust  English  butler  Robert  ( Donald  Sinden )  to  help  run  her  affairs. He  of  course  disapproves  of  everything  about  her  leading  to  either  a  hilarious  culture  clash  comedy  or  two  ageing  hams  shouting  at  each  other   according  to  taste.  Apparently  Stritch  was  fond  of  drinking  something  rather  stronger  than  the  good  old  English  cuppa  which  made  working  on  the  series  interesting.

It  ran  for  four  series  from  1975  to  1979  and  received  BAFTA  nominations  in  1977  and  1979.  Stritch  stayed  in  the  UK  for  a  few  years  then  returned  to  the  USA  where  her  career  in  US  TV  and  performing  one  woman  shows  continued  almost  up  to  her  death. Sinden  went  on  to  the  reviled  Never  The  Twain  which  ran  throughout  the  eighties  and  made  him  the  target  of  a  sustained  attack  from  Spitting  Image  which  portrayed  him  as  crazily  impatient  for  a  knighthood. In  one  sketch  he  starts  importuning  the  Queen  at  an  after-show  presentation  and  gets  told  "Go  away  you  dreadful  old  ham". He  finally  did  get  one  in  1997. He  claimed  that  he  was  never  out  of  work  between  1942  and  2008  ( when  his  recurring  role  on  Judge  John  Deed   finished )  though  he's  including  a  lot  of  voiceover  and  documentary  work  in  that. He  and  Stritch  died  within  weeks  of  each  other  in  2014.