Man About The House stars reunite for documentary
- Man About The House is to be celebrated in a new TV documentary
- Many of the sitcom's surviving stars have recorded new interviews for the programme
- Man About The House: 50 Years Of Laughs will air on Channel 5 on Saturday 14th October at 9:30pm
Stars of Man About The House have taken part in a new documentary about the hit sitcom.
From Out Of The Blue TV, the 80-minute celebration Comedy Classics: Man About The House will air on Channel 5 on Saturday 14th October at 9:30pm. Premiering under the title Man About The House: 50 Years Of Laughs , it will tell the story of one of the most iconic television series of the 1970s.
Running for six series and a feature film from 1973 - 76, the ITV sitcom was based around a flatshare comprising of one man (Robin) and two women, Chrissy and Jo, in an era when such mixed-gender cohabitation was viewed by society with suspicion if not outright contempt.
The series propelled former child star Richard O'Sullivan (Robin) and actresses Sally Thomsett (Jo) and Paula Wilcox (Chrissy) to television superstar status.
Completing the premise were the trio's landlords and downstairs neighbours, husband and wife George (Brian Murphy) and Mildred Roper (Yootha Joyce).
The Ropers quickly became firm audience favourites and enjoyed their own even more successful spin-off sitcom, and its own film adaptation, George & Mildred. It ran for five series from 1976, only ending due to the sudden death of star Joyce. Robin, a catering student in the original sitcom, enjoyed his own spin-off from 1977 in the form of Robin's Nest, in which he opens a bistro with wife Vicky and her father, James.
All three formats - comprising some 125 episodes between them - were created and written by Brian Cooke and Johnnie Mortimer, and sold for adaptation in the US to equal smash-hit popularity.
O'Sullivan retired from public life in 1996, but his surviving co-stars - Murphy, Thomsett and Wilcox - have all recorded interviews for the documentary, alongside co-creator Cooke and fellow actor Norman Eshley, who played Robin's brother in Man About The House and - as an entirely different character - the Ropers' snobby next-door neighbour in George & Mildred.