According to Philip Larkin’s poem Annus Mirabilis, “sexual intercourse began / In nineteen sixty-three.” But sex in peak-time television did not start – and, then, only fumblingly and furtively – until 1973. On 15 August that year, ITV premiered the sitcom Man About the House.
Its writer Brian Cooke had seen a few adverts in the flat shares section of the Evening Standard specifying “a male or female” flatmate. The phrasing was striking, as the convention at the time was for rentals being single-sex and, by heterosexual assumption, therefore no sex. Carla Lane’s The Liver Birds, which debuted on BBC One in 1969, featured two young women sharing.
“I suggested a mixed flat-sharing comedy,” recalls Cooke, 85, who, with his writing partner, Johnnie Mortimer, had an office and annual contract with the London-based ITV company Thames. The network was keen but nervous. “Sex was the problem we had. Because the powers that be at Thames said: ‘This is about sex, isn’t it?’ and we said: ‘No, no, it’s about flat-sharing.’ They said the man must be sleeping with at least one of the women and we said: ‘No, he might want to but he never does.’”
Even so, ITV initially insisted that the series must go out after the 9pm watershed, reducing its potential audience. Eventually, an 8.30pm slot was agreed as long as the scripts would be “naughty rather than dirty”.
“It seems quite surprising now, given that it was so innocent,” says Paula Wilcox, 73, who played flatmate Chrissy. “But there were real worries about it. Mixed flat-sharing at that time was almost unheard of.”
The taboo existed as, once both genders were under one roof, they might, in another term of the time, “live in sin” without parents or priests intervening. Possibly to appease Thames, not only were the flatmates not having sex, but neither was the married couple downstairs, the landlords, George and Mildred Roper.
Brian Murphy, 90, who played the sexually reluctant husband, says: “ITV – this surprises people – but, in the 1970s, they were much more strict than the BBC about the content and language in their programmes.”
That was because, while BBC executives had incorporated the liberations of the 1960s, the commercial network was tightly regulated and nervous of upsetting advertisers.
Man About the House ran for six ratings-topping series and led to two British spin-offs and an American remake and two spin-offs. It grew, though, from an ITV flop. In 1972, Cooke and Mortimer had written Alcock and Gander, a six-part comedy about a widow, played by Beryl Reid, who inherits her husband’s dodgy portfolio of business enterprises. One critic’s review claimed that the first word of the title described the content and the third what viewers wouldn’t take at the show.
“It was a bit of a disaster,” admits Cooke. “We knew the next one had to be a success or our whole careers would disappear.”
So they pulled two actors clear. In Alcock and Gander, Murphy, he remembers, “did one episode as a character who was almost a sketch for the future George – a henpecked wimp.” The writers re-signed him for the part that would make him a TV star. Richard O’Sullivan, who had played Gander, was cast as Robin Tripp, who, found asleep in the bath after a party, becomes the new flatmate of Chrissy and Jo.
Wilcox was known from Jack Rosenthal’s ITV comedy The Lovers (ITV, 1970-71), in which her character was attempting to resist the “permissive society” by marrying before having sex – another example of TV’s tip-toeing around the bedroom. She had also just done an episode of The Benny Hill Show, in which the titular comic played a “dirty old man” character – who may or may not have been a comic persona.
“He was a bit peculiar,” says Wilcox. “There were a couple of things he wanted me to do, where I just said: ‘No way.’ I remember he wanted me to bend over a sofa at one point, and I said: ‘I don’t do things like that. I was 21! So I just ignored him.”
In contrast, she found Man About the House “completely a safe space” for her and Sally Thomsett, former young star of The Railway Children, who was cast as Jo. They were also lucky that the series avoided the more extreme stereotypes of the time. The biggest reason for Chrissy and Jo wanting a male flatmate? They couldn’t cook – despite many sitcoms of the era featuring female characters who did nothing else.
“That was very clever,” says Wilcox. “And, also, they were very strong women, who took no nonsense from Robin and stood up for each other.”
Unfortunately, catastrophe struck before they’d even finished writing. Cooke remembers: “We’d just finished the fourth of the seven scripts for the first series when Johnnie suddenly collapsed. He had an abscess on his hip, needed a major operation and a year’s recovery. Which was a problem because actors, studios and crew were already booked for seven shows and we were starting in two weeks.”
Cooke volunteered to write the last three alone but “Thames weren’t keen. I realised they saw me as a half.” He insisted on going solo but, in the touching protocol of comedy writing duos, still split the fee with his partner, who, out of hospital, was able to contribute to the seventh.
In that era, sitcoms were recorded on Sunday evenings because the target actors tended to be performing in theatre the other six days. Murphy points out that the old theatre “weekly rep” system – with a new show starting every seven days – meant theatre actors were practised at learning a new script each week, making them attractive to producers: “Early TV was very much an extension of theatre. It was much later it became its own artform, acted and directed in a different way.”
They were also unlikely to be thrown by recording in front of a live audience. “As theatre actors,” says Murphy, “we were used to judging whether people were liking a show. And, after we recorded the first episode of Man About the House, the reaction of the studio audience was so strong that we did all think it was going to work.”
Viewers and reviewers enthused about the show from its Wednesday night debut in a schedule featuring Coronation Street, on which Wilcox is now a cast member. And, though not between the main characters, sexual intercourse did begin on British TV in 1973. Robin’s friend Larry, Cooke points out, “had a very decent sex life”.
“Looking back, we were so aware Man About the House had to succeed that we filled it up with potential,” the writer remembers. “Every sight gag and punchline we could think of.” Although used to writing the number of pages to fill a commercial half-hour, the writers found at the end of script one that they had written enough for two episodes. “Even after the pilot, someone at Thames said there was a whole series in the Ropers.”
Clearly they were right. Spin-off sitcom George and Mildred ran for five series from 1976-79. It also prompted another series, with a line in the pilot episode about the male lodger’s dream of opening his own restaurant proving to be the seed of Robin’s Nest, a six-season hit from 1977-81. So, ultimately, Man About the House’s 1973 pilot script led to 17 successful comedy runs in Britain. From 1977, the US network ABC made 172 episodes over eight runs of Three’s Company, a version of Man About the House – the rules of platonic co-habitation still applying even in a more liberated culture. The two British spin-offs also had transatlantic cousins: The Ropers (ABC, 1979-80) and Three’s a Crowd (ABC, 1984-85). “We were proud of that,” admits Cooke.
In Britain, the shows featuring the Ropers were watched by 20 million people. “That took some getting used to,” Murphy admits. “In theatre you might have two or three people at stage door, wanting an autograph. But, with a TV hit then, you were recognised in streets, shops, restaurants. You became common property. Yootha [Joyce, who played Mildred] found it quite difficult. Men would shout out that they would be happy to do George’s duty between the sheets for him.”
Joyce’s shock at the level of public attention was felt by friends to contribute to the health issues that led to her death in 1980, aged 53, soon after the opening of a George and Mildred movie. Murphy’s voice still warms when he talks about her, as does Cooke when recalling his 30-year partnership with Mortimer (“never one argument”), who died in 1992. O’Sullivan, after a stroke 20 years ago, lives in an actors’ retirement home. He is 79.
“I’ve visited him there with Sally and Paula,” says Murphy. “We talk about Man About the House and he’s in good spirits and very well cared for.”
Some comedies from the era – such as ITV’s openly racist Love Thy Neighbour and Mind Your Language – are banned from being repeated, while others carry warnings about reflecting the language and attitudes of the time.
“Man About the House and George and Mildred are repeated with no disclaimer before them,” says Cooke. “There’s nothing really worrying in them. Our rule was to be funny without being rude.”
In 1977, sexual intercourse on ITV really got going. Thames gave Wilcox Miss Jones and Son, in which she was allowed to have sex without marriage, living as a single mother with a baby: “Looking back,” she says, “the young women I got to play in that and Man About the House were not obvious types on TV.”
• All episodes of Man About the House and George and Mildred are available on ITVX
