German Week
'Are You Being Served?' was originally conceived as an educational show, to teach young viewers about the career opportunities in a busy department store, with Mr Lucas and Miss Brahms as the audience identification characters. The mysterious figure of Mr Grainger would recruit them against their will and whisk them off in a series of hair-raising adventures, where they would encounter aggressive customers and battle with the unfeeling laws of economics.
OK, maybe not, but 'German Week' did manage to increase my German vocabulary, which is more than all my years at school ever did. Admittedly, this is mainly because I did French and a bit of Latin , but you get my point.
With the UK having joined the European Economic Community in 1973 (see also 'Doctor Who : The Curse Of Peladon'), this story gets a chance to comment on events of the day, and makes interesting viewing in 2018.
Words such as 'Ausfahrt', 'Bustenhalter' and 'Strumpfs' are thrown around with gay abandon and Mr Humphries brandishes a sword-stick (see 'Adam Adamant Lives!') and memorably also wears the tightest lederhosen in television history.
Mrs Slocombe gets terribly sloshed on the wine and we have the set-piece dance at the end, which was also attempted in the pilot episode of the American adaptation of the show, 'Beane's Of Boston', though with noticeably less precise camerawork.
The DVD release is slightly odd in that it puts 'German Week' ahead of 'Wedding Bells', though they were apparently shown the other way round, according to BBC Genome, but either way, Mr Rumbold gets a new secretary in the form of Moira Foot as Miss Thorpe, who attracts the attention of both Captain Peacock and Young Mr Grace.
This week we get a mention of 'Colditz' and 'Frankenstein' and another guest apparance from Joanna Lumley, this time in severe mode.
Mister Grainger may not be keen on the events of 'German Week', but it not only educated us, but entertained us as well.
And at no point we were looking for the Ausfahrt.
Our video about 'German Week' can be seen here.
(Written by Andrew Trowbridge)
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