Shark Bytes

this show is great but i have to admit the episode back in fashion was not the greatest.the two actors who did not like each other but they were always good at covering it up but in this episode you can acually see how much they hated each other

I enjoyed this series at the time, but like many sitcoms it has dated horribly, and I now find repeats unwatchable. It jumped the shark in its last few years, with ever more contrived plots, such as Albert's old friends chasing off the local protection racketeers with kung fu skills picked up from Bruce Lee films! Or variations of the standard 'Albert ruins Harold's chances with a bird' plot with more and more artificial means, such as the waterbed.

Steptoe & Son jumped the shark before it was made. It is the most depressing piece of television ever made in the UK. When it went to colour, it was no better. I'd rather have root canal work done on a tooth than watch Steptoe & Son

The first episode of the eight (and last) series - 'Back in Fashion' - was an absolute clanger. It involved two Vogue photographers just happening across the Steptoe back yard and deciding that it would be a great backdrop for a fashion shoot. Harold (whose hair looks like it hasn't been cut since Harold Wilson scraped back into 10 Downing Street) tries to play the sophisticate with the models (who look like they've been on the Atkins Diet since birth),while Albert nips upstairs to don a gangster outfit, posing with the girls and his machine gun! The whole sorry mess ends with a disgruntled Harold taking polaroid photos of Albert on the khasi (and becoming strangely excited about it)! For a show that scaled the heights with episodes such as 'The Desperate Hours', 'Men of Letters' and 'The Bath', the eight series, and its premiere episode in particular, was an absolute travesty, resulting in the show finishing with a whimper rather than a bang.

One piece of trivia. If you're an American and watched "A Hard Day's Night", you probably didn't get the joke about Paul McCartney's grandfather being a "clean old man". That joke stems back to this show. Paul's grandfather was played by Wilfred Brimball, who was the father on Steptoe and Son on whom Fred Sanford was based. Every time the son discovered the old man's antics, he would yell, "You Dirty Old Man". Thus, the clean old man joke was a play on a common British catch phrase of the time.

This is probably the most moving sitcom ever (which doesn't prevent it being funny, too, but the humour is often, well, excruciating). It's about a dysfunctional father-and-son relationship. I can't do it justice in words. It's probably the best sitcom ever made for British TV.

Sanford and Son was based on this gem. The only thing the original needed was Grady and Rollo!