Tuesday, January 30, 2018

George & Mildred (1980)

The 1970s and 1980s was a hard time for British cinema with money scarce and seemingly ideas even scarcer. Popular sitcoms and other TV shows were ruthlessly plundered to make low budget and relatively low risk movies. George & Mildred was a popular TV sitcom that ran in the late 1970s and became the latest show to hit the big screen. It was also such a colossal flop it pretty much ended the practice.

Truthfully the feature length versions of these sitcoms and dramas has produced some turkeys (and some decent fare such as the Sweeney movies). How about George & Mildred the movie? It's not as bad as you think, it's certainly not good by any stretch of the imagination but it could have been so much worse.

Starring Brian Murthy and Yootha Joyce the film involves various ridiculous scenes in a posh hotel (where George is mistaken for a hitman - the sheer bizarreness of this one of the best things about the film). Ultimately though the film is too far removed from the original show and what made it popular.