Starters - TV Dinners
It was obviously someone with genuine insight who thought that the internal workings of a restaurant would make a good backdrop for a sitcom.
Alas, somewhere along the line, the "com" bit became just a side order leaving us with just a situation, thus: Robin Tripp (played by Richard O'Sullivan), he of the title, is a handy cook who dreams of starting his own bistro. He does this with the help of his girlfriend, Vicky (Tessa Wyatt), who, this being 1977, naturally waits at table and looks pretty, and does not a lot else. Her father, played with a never-subsiding frown by Tony Britton, disapproves of the relationship, along with Robin's shoulder-length hair and flowered shirts, as the rest of the country of whatever age will eventually come to do some years later.
But the real star is a one-armed washer-upper called Albert Riddle, who just happens to be Irish for dollops of extra '70s PC-free laughs. There's many a child of the times who successfully negotiated an 8pm curfew then spent the following day's play time speculating on whether actor David Kelly really only had one arm or if it was indeed just tied behind his back. Apart from the attempts of a severely disabled person to perform manual labour, the main "joke" seemed to be the central character's name being mistaken for Robin Snest as people misunderstood the name of the restaurant. It really was that good. The programme was essentially a vehicle for Richard O'Sullivan and was spun-off from the marginally superior Man About the House, in which he played out a semi-farce scenario with two female flatmates.
Still not that good, but one of the better ITV comedies from an era that spawned Love Thy Neighbour (ritual verbal abuse from a white man towards his black neighbour, and vice versa) and Mind Your Language (hijinks in an English language school that poked fun at the Chinese, Japanese, Indians, Pakistanis, Greeks, Italians and one or two other nationalities). Culinary racism had already been covered by Spike Milligan's earlier Curry & Chips.
NEXT MONTH: how the BBC won the '70s restaurant humour wars.
