Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em was something of a sitcom oddity. Ask anybody who watched it how long it ran, and how many episodes there were, and estimates will range wildly. In fact it ran for three brief seasons from 1973 to 1978 (the first two both being confined to the debut year of 1973) and a trio of Christmas specials - all in all, just 22 episodes.

Some Mothers was dreamed up by struggling TV writer Raymond Allen, who had been submitting TV scripts since the early Sixties, with only a few comedy sketches ever being accepted. His new idea concerned the central character of Frank Spencer. Spencer, in a manner similar to Laurel and Hardy (who were boyhood heroes of Crawford), was a walking disaster area - fully competent at being incompetent. Whether it was mending a boiler, auditioning for a job at a holiday camp or transporting a child's playhouse back home, if he could get it wrong; he would get it wrong.

After being rejected by ITV, Allen's proposal then landed on the desk of Michael Mills, Head of Comedy at the BBC, who saw the potential and commissioned a series of 7 episodes. The lead part of the series (then being called variously Don't Bring Frank, His Mother Was Just The Same and I Do Try) was offered first to Norman Wisdom (who probably could have had a fair stab at it) and then, more strangely, to Ronnie Barker - but both turned down the role. The third choice was Michael Crawford, who had his own ideas on how to interpret the part: "The characterisation I worked out in a play called No Sex Please We're British. I thought it was getting a very good reaction and people were laughing at him. There was also a lot of pathos attached to the character so I'd thought I'd like to develop it. He's a strange mixture because he's funny in what he says and also how he behaves but inside he's boiling - he's an incredibly sensitive soul. To play the part properly you've got to know what it feels like when people say things that hurt." Though Raymond Allen was credited with sole responsibility for the scripts, Crawford had a great deal of impromptu input causing Allen to remark dryly on one occasion, "It was nice of you to use some of my words."

Between them, Crawford, Mills (who had taken on the role as the programme's producer/director) and Allen added other ingredients to the prototype character. Spencer was given a supreme ability to annoy people - within the space of a ten minute conversation, otherwise calm and rational folk could be reduced to tears by Spencer's habit of not answering questions coherently or filling his responses with pointless trivial monologues, usually concerning his childhood. Frank was easily shocked and immensely naïve - any slightly risqué comment or action getting in response a startled "oooh" and a strained expression. He could find a homosexual advance in the most innocent of deeds. The image was completed by his clothing - his permanent attire was a raincoat and beret worn atop tight trousers and a gaudy tank-top, which he even wore in bed.

Surprisingly, the somewhat effeminate Frank Spencer was married. His mild-mannered wife, Betty (played by Michele Dotrice, actually fifth choice of actress after Sinead Cusack, Elisabeth Sladen, Linda Hayden and Nell Curran), seemed to exist on the edge of a nervous breakdown brought on by Frank's almost uninterrupted stints of being unemployed and their general lack of money. Nevertheless, she was loyal to him and always took his side when he was being criticised.

As with Laurel and Hardy, the series required an amount of action work to portray Frank's misadventures. When executed properly, these sequences (almost always done by Crawford himself without the use of a stand-in) could be amusing. However, more often than not, BBC economies played their part and the end results were less than they should have been. Having said this, exploits like Frank's wild roller-skate ride through the streets, or his ejection through a church roof by a stage lift, were and still are the highlights of the series to many. There was much public concern about the risky stunts causing Michael Mills to comment: "I'm torn between two things here. One is to say, 'Oh it's frightfully dangerous and he shouldn't do it and he's breaking his neck four times a day,' and that sort of thing. But the truth of the matter is that neither Michael nor I are really quite as stupid as we look and we wouldn't do things unless they were very, very carefully prepared and all the possible precautions were being taken. That's my job as the producer and that's his job as an actor - to make sure he doesn't do anything where he's going to kill himself."

Once again proving she lives on a different planet from the rest of us, self-appointed TV watchdog Mary Whitehouse attacked the series describing Crawford as "a purveyor of pornography" because of Frank's supposed obsession with his genitals ("Genitals...that's a very rude word for her to use," pointed out a mid-seventies TV interviewer. "It's a very long word for her to use," retorted Crawford sharply).

At the end of the second series, to everybody's bemusement, Frank and Betty managed to have a baby (in spite of Frank's frequent references to his unspecified groinal "trouble"). After a further two lone Christmas specials, Crawford decided to hang up his beret and move onto other projects. He explained: "I wanted to go off and do different things in those days. I didn't want to be owned by the public as a character. They'll demand that you go on and do more and more but I think you have to be very disciplined about your own career and I want to be acting when I'm 60 and 70."

Despite Crawford's fears of typecasting, he eventually donned the mac and beret again for a belated third (and last) season in 1978. Some slight changes to his character were made after worried viewers had voiced their fears about Frank as a father. "I decided," said Crawford, "that the original Frank Spencer could be made to grow up a little - to be slightly more sophisticated. Frank had to grow up, after five years, or he would seem a complete idiot. He is more in command, but still getting things wrong - simply because he is accident-prone. I knew this had to be done very well indeed. Otherwise people would say I should have left while I was ahead."

Frank had indeed now grown up - he was more self-assured and often assumed an air of preposterous self-importance (he would answer his name with "I am he"). This behaviour caused him to use words that he didn't understand, and so Spencer now became a Malaprop as well (claiming, for example, to have been "ejaculated" from his previous home and threatening to take his medical problems to "Harlot Street"). This last series saw Frank's long-lost grandfather appear from Australia offering Frank a new life on a sheep-station.

Crawford subsequently refused the BBC's requests for further Some Mothers despite allegedly being offered a joint contract by the BBC and an foreign broadcaster (reportedly American, but more likely Australian, where the show was a massive hit) for another 5 years of episodes. Just in case, the BBC decided to leave the series oddly open-ended - Frank last being seen taking flying lessons ready for his move to Australia. Crawford moved onto another sitcom, Chalk And Cheese, which was not well-received. Thereafter, he concentrated mainly on musical stage shows such as Barnum and Phantom Of The Opera. The spectre of Frank Spencer was kept alive long after the series ended as a fallback for TV impressionists (notably Mike Yarwood and Bobby Davro - the latter of which was spied on British TV in November 1998 still doing Frank Spencer impersonations...dear oh dear...).

Luckily the episodes of Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em were not affected by the BBC's archive purges of the seventies and have been much-repeated since - often in disgracefully abbreviated form - both on the terrestrial BBC channels and on UK Gold on satellite. They were also amongst the most successful of the BBC's early home-video releases.

In the guide that follows, each of the episodes is listed together with full cast, crew and transmission details, although for the third season the character names were given only in Radio Times and not on screen. I give a synopsis of each episode and some brief critical comment. Each episode is given a star rating out of five relative to the other episodes. The titles given for the episodes were not shown on screen (or, apart from Jessica's First Christmas, used in Radio Times) and are intended to be descriptive rather than aesthetic. Three different (sometimes incomplete and/or overlapping) sets of assumed titles exist - those used internally by the BBC; those used on the various UK and US home-video releases; and those used in Kaleidoscope's The British Television Comedy Research Guide 1950-1997. This guide follows the "official" BBC titles (as listed on the BBC's Videotape Library computer), but the other titles are mentioned in passing. All dates are in European DD/MM/YY format. All initial transmissions were on BBC1 unless otherwise stated.

Various mp3 audio clips are included. These will give people who are new to the series some idea of what it was about, but there is really no substitute for seeing the actual programmes or buying the videos, as Crawford's facial expressions were so much part of the programme (as were the stunts!) But, of course, the clips may while away the odd hour or two at work...

Clips:
Michael Crawford describes the genesis of the show - from To Be Perfectly Frank. (0.7MB)
Crawford and producer, Michael Mills, on the stunt work - from To Be Perfectly Frank. (0.6MB)
Michael Crawford and DJ, Emma B, talk about the show - from The 100 Top TV Characters. (2.6MB)
Australian comedian Mark Little on the show - from The Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em Selection Box. (0.2MB)
Ronnie Hazelhurst's famous piccolo theme tune (for which he was paid £30) in its full version. (Quality warning! 1.0MB)

Notes on availability of episodes.

In the UK...

Second Sight have DVD and VHS video sets of the all three of the main seasons in print, as well as a release with the three Christmas specials. There is also a boxed set (see right, below) of all four DVDs.

Caveat Emptor: Purchasers should note that the release of Season Three, above, is compromised by missing material. As with the earlier Second Sight VHS release of Moving House, some two minutes of footage has been removed. The reasons for this are not known, but it seems almost certain this is some misguided attempt by the BBC to removal material they deem racially sensitive. The script for the missing portion, and an audio clip of it, can be found by clicking here.

In the USA...

BFS Entertainment & Multimedia (under the BBC Gold tag) have 5 tape volumes in print, each containing 2 episodes. The selection of stories is a bit bizarre with weak episodes (e.g. Motorbike, George's House) often taking precedence over better episodes which remain unavailable (e.g. Frank and Marvin, Learning to Fly).

• The Job Interview (aka Getting a Job) + The Psychiatrist
• Cliffhanger + King of the Road (aka Motorbike)
• George's House + Love Thy Neighbour
• The Hospital Visit + Fathers' Clinic
• Have a Break, Take a Husband + The RAF Reunion
• There is also a boxed set of all 5 tapes above, with Moving House^* as a bonus.

The DVD's are:

• Have a Break, Take a Husband + The RAF Reunion + Cliffhanger + King of the Road (aka Motorbike)
• The Job Interview (aka Getting a Job) + The Psychiatrist + George's House + Love Thy Neighbour
• The Hospital Visit + Fathers' Clinic + Moving Hous (apparently with the same cut as the UK version, above)
• There is also a boxed set of all 3 DVD's above.

Please do not email me asking where you can get copies (which, in my experience, are usually thinly-disguised requests for bootleg copies) - any good on-line retailer will stock the releases above and any good video shop/store should be able to order them.

Text portions copyright © S.Phillips 2003. All rights reserved. I can be emailed for comments etc. but please note that I cannot supply private copies of episodes. (And the name of Frank's cat is Cleopatra. I get asked that so much, it must be on a trivia quiz somewhere!)