Up Captain Peacock

Up Captain Peacock

We seem to be falling into a weekly schedule for our rewatch of 'Are You Being Served?', now that we've rediscovered the DVD for Season Three, which suits us fine.

First broadcast on 13th March 1975, 'Up Captain Peacock' gave us over six pages of notes by the end of it, which is going some.

But it's an interesting character piece, with Mr Grainger being annoyed at Captain Peacock being allowed access to both the Executive Washroom and the Executive Dining Room, neither of which he's seen the inside of even after his many years of loyal service.

You've got appearances from Jeffrey Segal, Donald Hewlett and Michael Knowles within the space of 30 minutes, which is pretty good value by anyone's standards.

We learn of the different classes of bow-tie available at Grace Brothers and get to see Donald Hewlett in a dress.

Mister Mash has another daft display model, this time for Sensitouch rubber gloves, which inevitably end up giving V-signs after Mrs Slocombe has tampered with it.

With a change in the lunch hours, everyone is feeling hungry and cross. Mister Humphries, having gone without his breakfast, is very keen to get his hands on his melon balls, even after a visit from the Meals On Wheels service that Mister Mash begins to operate from the lift.

Come 2pm, Mister Grainger is supping his soup with much gusto and even more in the way of decibels, but the Factory Inspector is on the case and declares the dining area is too small for the number of people it has to serve.

Captain Peacock and Mister Rumbold have barely sipped their Peruvian Beaujolais (type) wine before a suspiciously light wall is removed to knock the area into one.

I'm glad we've picked up the pace on these again as I think Season Three is the point at which 'Are You Being Served?' really starts to hit its stride. And the BBC seemed to agree as the first Christmas Special is looming on the horizon. Although some of those will present us with a few problems when it comes to certain scenes...

Our video about 'Up Captain Peacock' can be seen here.

(Written by Andrew Trowbridge)