‘THE BOY FRIEND’

Please feel free to comment on my review.

In this ‘Keeping Up Appearances’ episode, Hyacinth is thrilled when she hears that Emmet is doing a musical production of ‘The Boy Friend’, featuring music from the 1920s. She does everything she can to get Emmet to cast her as the main star. Emmet is terrified once he and Liz are invited to coffee. 😀

Incidentally, I’ve never come across ‘The Boy Friend’ as a musical production in any form or other – not even as a TV/film production yet. It would be nice to check out, especially with 1920s music in it. ‘The Boy Friend’ doesn’t get explored much in this episode. There’s a touch of it in the next episode.

This is a fairly decent ‘Keeping Up Appearances’ episode with some enjoyable humorous moments in it. Even the moment at the beginning of the episode where Jeremy Gittins as the Vicar rides on a bicycle and he falls over once Hyacinth called out to him is funny. He and Emmet escape together. 😀

The episode also has Daisy trying to spend some time with Onslow whilst Rose and Daddy are out for the day. She brings him breakfast in bed, but Onslow doesn’t seem interested. Even when she does ‘The Stripper’ dance in front of Onslow (which Morecambe & Wise did better), Onslow isn’t aroused.

Eventually, Daddy returns and believes himself to be back in the war again. He dresses up as a soldier with a gas mask on (“Are you my Mummy?”) and defends the house, threatening Onslow with a bayonet in the process. You know what Corporal Jones would say! “They don’t like it up ’em!”

Pretty soon, Hyacinth turns up and manages to snap Daddy out of it with a shout that works. It’s amazing that worked, especially after the dog in the car barked at her on approaching the house. It was also interesting to see Onslow and Daisy’s other neighbours when Hyacinth and Richard arrived.

The episode concludes with Hyacinth and Daisy talking about the men in their life whilst Onslow asks Richard about sharing a bed with Hyacinth. These different points of view are pretty intriguing. I felt sorry for Richard, since Hyacinth doesn’t find him attractive anymore. She’s in a world of her own. 🙁

It would be interesting to learn what built up to make Hyacinth like she is in the TV series, with being snooty, snobby and everything and how Richard met her. Sadly that’s never explored in both the ‘Keeping Up Appearances’ TV series and the ‘Young Hyacinth’ prequel, which is a one-off episode. 😐

‘The Boy Friend’ rating – 7/10