Kingswood Country
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Kingswood Country was an Australian sitcom that screened from 1980 to 1984. The series started on 30 January 1980 and was a spin-off from a sketch on comedy program The Naked Vicar Show that had featured Ross Higgins as a blustering bigot. A 'Best Of' DVD was released in 2003 featuring 13 out of the 69 episodes as well as the original skit on The Naked Vicar Show that spawned the series. More recently Australian Pay-TV channel FOX Classics has secured the rights to show the program.
While some condemned its racist and sexist humour, this was often simply a plot device to show the bigotry of the main character, Ted Bullpitt (Ross Higgins) - a stereotypical Australian conservative, bigoted, WASP, Holden Kingswood-loving glue factory worker who recalls his difficult childhood in ever more exaggerated ways. He lives for three things: his beloved chair in front of the TV, his unsuccessful racing greyhounds and his worshipped Holden Kingswood car (late in the show's run Ted traded-in the Kingswood, which had gone out of production around the time the series began, for Holden's replacement mid-rage family car, the Commodore). His long-suffering wife Thelma Bullpitt (Judi Farr) was cast as a traditional housewife trapped by Ted's traditional family views but she often got her own back on Ted, eventually leaving him by going on a Women's Weekly World Tour and never coming back.
Humour was generated by the conflict of Ted's traditional views and his children's progressive nature. For example, his son Craig (Peter Fisher) is portrayed as a sexually rampant medical student and is referred to as an "Al Grassby Groupie", a reference to a progressive politician of the times. His daughter, Greta (Laurel McGowan),is portrayed as a feminist and is married to Bruno (Lex Marinos), the son of Italian immigrants, to which Ted strongly objects (often referring to him as "bloody wog").
At other times humour was based the more traditional comedic methods of poorly-thought out schemes of Ted's (usually get-rich-quick); class differences (between the suburban Bullpitts and Ted's upwardly-mobile sister-in-law Merle) and simple misunderstandings leading to a chain of humourous events.
The series reflected the changing culture of Australia through Ted's inability to accept this change: from traditional culture to multiculturalism; from basic to advanced education levels and from conservative to more liberal politics. Several elements of the show, and indeed the overall premise and the character types of the show, were similar to British sitcom Til Death Us Do Part. Co-incidentally, just as the wife character in Til Death Us Do Part left the series before its end, so too did wife Thelma in Kingswood Country when Judi Farr decided to leave the series. Her absence was explained by having Thelma going on an extended cruise, and Bruno's mother Rosa (Sheila Kennelly) moved in to look after Ted.
The series has spawned some catchprases such as "Pickle me Grandmother!"; "Somebody should blow (insert anything that annoys you here) up!"; "Not the Kingswood!" and the universal insult for a miserable, miserly old man: "Grumblebum!".
Guest stars in the series included Graham Kennedy, Bert Newton and Noeline Brown.
A sequel to the series was the short-lived, much panned Bullpitt! in 1997. Of the original show's cast only Ross Higgins had a regular role. Also in the cast was Elaine Lee.
The show has won the Most Popular Comedy Award in 1981 and 1982 at the Logies
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