Citizen Smith as viewed in 2022

As it is heading into spring I have started to finish traversing Ava Alexis’s Christmas presents and have just watched the whole of John Sullivan’s Citizen Smith.  It still seems very topical what with the economy heading towards the oil price booms and inflationary spirals of the 1970s again…

Included in the box set is the pilot episode which was re-recorded when the pilot went to series due to the re-casting of “father” Artro Morris with Peter Vaughan who gets to play a rather more sympathetic character than his usual sinister characters such as "Genial" Harry Grout in Porridge – although there’s always the undertone of menace.  

Vaughn’s character is father to Walter Henry "Wolfie" Smith's girlfriend Shirley Johnson (Cheryl Hall) and despite despising Wolfie offers him and his deadbeat pal Ken Mills a flat upstairs to rent “with hilarious consequences” because they are being evicted for being too lazy to work to pay the rent in their previous digs.  This act of uncharacteristic generosity by the right wing Mr Johnson is due to not being able to actually stand up to the daughter he dotes on and to the intercessions of his wife Florence – gloriously realised by the late Hilda Braid as innocent, silly, trusting and confused.  She constantly refers to Wolfie as “Foxy” and seems to believe local villain Harry Fenning’s minders are his “foster children”.  Hilda Braid is a genius at making homely-matter-of-fact-silliness sound sensible.

Robert Lindsay and Cheryl Hall were actually married during the first two series and this lends the acting extra chemistry.  Most of the plots are predictable sitcom fair but Sullivan manages one or two impressive plot twists along the way.  Highly memorable is the episode where Charlie is being made redundant from his lucrative security job and Wolfie doesn’t realise the game that’s actually being played. Underneath all this are themes of genuine love.  Charlie genuinely loves Hilda and Wolfie genuinely loves Shirley and Charlie loves his daughter too trapping them in a strange confused muddle generated by Wolfie's selfish sloth and idealism until… After two series Cheryl/Shirley has had enough and leaves as does Peter Vaughn who is recast again as Tony Steedman with zero explanation.  Why the Johnsons continue to put up with Wolfie after Shirley has emigrated is explained in a fantastic episode that introduces John Tordoff as a mentally deranged policeman called Brian Tofkin - Tordoff's character returns in another later episode to steal all the scenes again.  I don't know if all the jokes about insanity would get under the wire today but it is a stand out comedy performance ... so who cares?  Don't write in.

Pub landlord and petty criminal Harry Fenning then becomes a more central character as Wolfie works his way towards the actually rather pathetic revolution attempt at the end of series 3 via a career in petty crime.  Talking of re-castings I kept thinking to myself “I recognise Fenning from somewhere” and then the penny dropped that he’s Travis 1 from Blake’s 7 (Stephen Greif).  Greif gives a completely different performance here.  Not just a different hairstyle but different accent and hand gestures.  And he does it all without an eye patch.  Don’t know how this can be … I think it must be called acting.  It’s interesting too to see him giving a performance where he has to react to a live audience.  

The rest of Wolfie’s gang are a great ensemble cast.  Tony Millan as Tucker is the epitome of self pity.  His doleful face reappears over and over again over the years – notably in Alexei Sayle’s Stuff …perhaps the communist theme helped him get the gig.  Mike Grady does pathetic dreamer very well … one can see echoes of Barry from Last of the Summer Wine in Ken Mills.  And George Sweeney adds an edge of danger as the brutish Speed. 

After the failed revolution at the end of series 3, series 4 charts Wolfie’s final descent from prison to man on the run with a contract on his head… where else could it have gone?  Is there an implication in the final scene that Wolfie might have been rubbed out by Fenning's underworld successor...?  Or worse perhaps … he’s had to grow up?  There isn’t room in the world for Wolfie Smiths anymore…?  Or at least that’s what they told Jeremy Corbyn when they fired him…