Are You Being Served? (1972)
- TV sitcom
- BBC One
- 1972 - 1985
- 69 episodes (10 series)
Sitcom set in London department store Grace Bros., where the Ladies' Intimate Apparel and Men's Ready To Wear departments are forced to share a floor. Stars Mollie Sugden, Frank Thornton, John Inman, Wendy Richard, Nicholas Smith and more.
Streaming rank this week: 4,520
Press clippings Page 3
Store that inspired AYBS forced to shut
Almost 24 years after Grace Brothers shut up shop, the family-run department store which inspired the classic sitcom has closed its doors for good. A victim of the credit crunch, Rossiters, which had been trading for more than 150 years, shut this weekend after being hit by falling sales in the bleak economic climate.
Rebecca Camber, Daily Mail, 1st February 2009Are You Being Served? was usually spoken of in the same breezy breath as Donald McGill, the saucy postcard man. How easy it is to imagine them all on a staff outing to a seaside, wearing bathing drawers of antique cut. Except, of course, Mr Rumbold's secretary, who was always built on the lines of a roller-coaster and with very much the same effect on the heart.
Nancy Banks-Smith, The Guardian, 2nd April 1985Well, people enter Are You Being Served? by walking downstairs, one by one in more or less fancy dress. Original it ain't. Indeed, it is strangely familiar. It reminds me of that stuff of which not a drop is sold until it's 10 years old. The effect is much the same: you tend to fall on the floor and feel utterly ashamed of yourself afterwards.
Nancy Banks-Smith, The Guardian, 9th April 1976