Well, I'm with Charlie Boy!
When I heard of this, I had high hopes.
In these politically correct times it would have been fun to play with assumptions and assertions of feminism and the patriarchy. The potential for satire here was glaring.
But nothing happened.
It was a sort of blander version of 'tea ladies', but in wigs.
If you put together a team of proto-feminists in Victorian dress, you need to let them loose on some menfolk. Especially on some unreformed male-votes-only menfolk.
For this you don't need to leave the confines of the hall. So budget should be no restriction.
In that regard comedy is conflict.
But at best this was a tame rehearsal of snippets of arguments here or there.
The sparks never flew.
Why? Well, because one side was right and heroic. That's why.
Jessica Hynes appeared in a post-Newsnight feminist sit-in as part of the BBC's rights and what-not series, of which the first Up The Women was a tranche.
It became immediately clear to me why her suffragettes had no comic potential. They were a species of statue. They were right. They were as much an idyll as an ideal.
The classic example I would forward is 'Allo 'Allo!.
The English are stupid, the French horny and the Germans kinky.
There is no right side. They're all daft as a brush. No one is sacrosanct.
Something of that sort was desperately needed in Up The Women.
One had to be willing to take the mick out of the suffragettes and let them rile against some equally idiotic male opposition.
Mainwaring needs the Warden, Fletch needs Mr Mackay, the Vicar needs Councillor Horton.
But nothing happened.
The comic potential of the daredevil hardliners of their age who would threaten to starve themselves (!!!), set against a male world which thought they were all unhinged, remained completely untapped.
Mainly it was a competition between the two matriarchs. Oh and the lowly one always got ordered to do all the chores. Hilarious.
So yes, I vote with Charlie Boy. Just not funny!
