Pensioners Behaving Badly: The Aged Pleasures Of You’re Only Young Twice

Hard as it might be to believe now, there was a time when British sitcoms were made for the mass audience, rather than a smug self-styled elite. The situation comedy was a mainstay of peak-time viewing, pitched at the family audience and popular on both the BBC and ITV – though the latter’s output was always the lesser-regarded and more quickly forgotten, emerging from regional broadcasters and only occasionally peaking with shows like Rising Damp. While the best-known of the classic 1970s comedies continue to lumber across our TV screens on assorted satellite channels and streaming services, there are dozens more that have disappeared into obscurity – sometimes deservedly, sometimes not. Thanks to the diligent efforts of labels like the much-missed Network, more and more of these lost shows re-emerged in recent years (and sadly, with the demise of that label, they are probably going to slip back into obscurity once more). But be warned – rose-tinted nostalgia can sometimes be shattered when confronted with these blasts from the past. What might have seemed hilarious in 1974 might not necessarily hold up today. Either through dated attitudes that even the most open-minded viewer might find a tad reactionary or simply because they are not very funny, many of the sitcoms that came and went within a few years have proven to be little more than curious novelties – fascinating artefacts of their time but hardly what you would think of as lost classics.

A prime example of the disposable sitcoms of the 1970s was You’re Only Young Twice, a Yorkshire TV show that ran for four seasons between 1977 and 1981. Set in the retirement home Paradise Lodge, the show was one of the earliest examples of the ‘oldies behaving badly’ genre, where pensioners misbehave, get into scares and generally act like overgrown kids – hence the title (other shows of the ilk include One Foot in the Grave, Waiting for God and The Old Guys). Peggy Mount, an actor who seemed to spend her entire life playing old battleaxes, is the opinionated, self-important and loudmouthed Flora Petty while Pat Coombs plays Cissie, her trusting but dopey sidekick. This is a classic comedy combination going back to the likes of Laurel and Hardy and Abbott and Costello – the blowhard with a bloated sense of their own intelligence and the gormless enabler who is their only friend. Joining their adventures are a supporting cast of equally cliched characters including Dolly (Lally Bowers) and Mildred (Diana King), two frightfully posh residents, Miss Milton (Charmain May), the equally posh head of the nursing home, handyman Roger (Johnny Wade) and Peggy Ledger as Katy, the obligatory sexy blonde.

Over four seasons totalling 29 episodes and two Christmas specials, the retired troublemakers get into various outlandish and farcical scrapes. They accidentally attract the attention of the Vice Squad through a badly worded newsagent ad, try to impress a TV commercials director, accidentally steal a china elephant, find a baby on the doorstep and cause havoc at a spring fair, in a hospital and elsewhere. They battle it out for nicer rooms that become vacant, get caught up with burglars, have royal visits and encounter gypsy curses, all of which is delivered with a theatrical sense of exaggeration, overacting and telegraphed punchlines, backed with music that is very Seventies sitcom as entirely unbelievable situations play out. None of the humour is exactly subtle – nor is any of it particularly amusing. Writers Michael Ashton and Pam Valentine go for the obvious at all times and seem to believe that bellowed dialogue is a reasonable substitute for humour.

A lot of these old sitcoms get by on a certain nostalgic charm and the fun of seeing pompous characters taken down a peg or two – or from the painful experience of seeing lead characters snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. This requires having characters that we can at least relate to, if not necessarily like – there’s something tragic about a figure like Basil Fawlty, no matter how much of a social-climbing snob he might be. The problem with You’re Only Young Twice, though, is Mount’s character, who is so completely unpleasant, self-centred and pushy that you wonder how she would have any friends. She’s remarkably annoying, and as she rarely gets her comeuppance, there’s little enjoyment to be had from watching her. There is no saving grace to her character and she just feels irritating and loud, dominating everything and reducing every other character to bystander status – even Coombs, as her sidekick, rarely gets to do anything beyond simpering. In the final episode of season 2, where the other residents mistakenly think she’s died, you almost wish they were right – not the feeling that you really want for the lead character in a TV show. Mount’s performance is full-blooded stuff for sure, but I’d rather it had been given in a role less one-dimensionally horrible.

You’re Only Young Twice is very much of its time, and how much you enjoy it will probably depend on various external circumstances like nostalgia and affection for the long-dead leads. If you saw it the first time around or if you enjoy broad stage farces, it might raise a few chuckles, but most viewers not seeing it through the rose-tinted glasses of childhood nostalgia will probably find it rather hard going. As an example of a long-lost era of television sitcoms, I’m glad it still exists and that it had a brief revival on DVD. But in general, the show is forgotten for good reason.

DAVID FLINT

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