On (20 Jun 95) Bob Lawrence wrote to Keith Richardson...



 BL> The two brilliant comedy shows I can't laugh at are "Yes,

 BL> Minister" and "Mother and Son". The guys who wrote
these, lived

 BL> them... they are too close to the truth for me.



 KR> do they attribute the origin of mother and son? if not it makes

 KR> it a somewhat watered down rip off of the original steptoe and

 KR> son.



 BL>   I loved Steptoe... and it's not the same as "Mother and
Son" at all,

 BL> keith. Maggie is nothing like the dirty old man, Arthur is nothing

 BL> like Harold, and the storylines are different. The brother is brand

 BL> new.



still comes to the same concept of the elderly person manipulating the

son to do their bidding. m&s is very much toned down from steptoe.



 KR> still its miles better than the pathetic yank version -

 KR> stanford and son.



 BL>   I never saw it. The other genuine rip off was Alf and "All in the

 BL> Family". I actually thought the American version was better, for

 BL> making Archie more human than Warren Mitchell made Alf. 



you were lucky, the yanks actually bought steptoe and alf, and then

transformed them, unfortunately foreign material is not acceptable over

there as a whole rash of somewhat second rate movies based on foreign

originals shows. i preferred alf, galt and simpson produced some very

hard edge dialog (they also wrote steptoe, and the older hancocks) where

the humour and the social comment were intermixed so finely that they

came out as one. there was one us show that started out that way - mash,

but it ended up taking itself too seriously and became ponderous.



 BL> It's really cruel. Fairchild was looking for an engineer to go to

 BL> Hong Kong and sell silicon transistors into TV. As it turned out,

 BL> the job was a crock, but I passed it on to a pommie bastard in the

 BL> lab, and the Fairchild job led naturally to Astec, and the bastard

 BL> is now a multi-millionaire!



 BL> Me, on the other hand... I bought a fucking house and got stuck

 BL> with a mother when Dad died. Arrrghh!



 BL> I could'a been a contender, Charlie...



but your life is so much more character building, the other guy is

probably just a rich fat slug with a bunch of dolly birds in tow now.

you wouldn't want to vegitate like that would you?  (:



                        Keith



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