Who Do You Think You're Kidding, Mr. Inman?

Brit T.V. Magazine - Publisher's Diatribe

(Please note that this article comes from Brit T.V. magazine. I am in no way affiliated
 with Brit T.V. but I would ask that you go to their website and at least check it out,
 even if you do not end up subscribing to Brit T.V. magazine. After all, it is due to
 this awesome magazine that articles such as this one are available for your viewing.
 Many thanks to "Rachel Yiddell" for sending me this article, in .jpg format. The
 article has been copied faithfully, preserving any original grammatical errors and such.)

 Brit T.V. - http://www.erols.com/brittv/

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New York

John Inman's ongoing contention that his character from ARE YOU BEING SERVED? was not
homosexual gives new meanings to the term "State Of Denial."
     Inman made this observation a few years back in an interview for the first issue of
_British_Television_ and the erstwhile Mr. Humphries has been arguing his character's
heterosexual-wannabe case with numerous subsequent interviewers as well.
     He seems to find significance in the argument that the series never _actually_said_
that Mr. Humphries was gay. This is true, so far as it goes. But it is equally true that
they _never_actually_said_ that Mr. Lucas was heterosexual, or that Old Captain Peacock
had a thing about young girls.
     These matters were, however, _implied_ all over the damn place. In the case of Mr.
Humphries, Inman's body language, facial expressions and speech patterns spelled out the
words _Humphries_is_gay_ in a manner worthy of the Ohio State University Marching Band at
halftime at the Rose Bowl.
     This was the one defining fact about ARE YOU BEING SERVED? which gave the show an
element of humanism. Something positive was going on against AYBS?'s background of
frustration and decadence. It may very well be a key reason why this Britcom is still
rerunning in America a quarter century after it first aired in Britain.
     Yet Inman, that silly little thespian, feels compelled to obscure and generally
vandalize the one performance for which he is ever likely to be remembered.
     The key question here is _why_? Why would anyone in this day and age seek to cover up
a 25-year-old mild act of support for Gay Liberation? Humphries being homosexual was the
key element that raised ARE YOU BEING SERVED? from the level of sophomoric farce and into
the realm of Something Actually Worth Watching.
     That Inman-denied gayness gave the show an emotional depth that would not otherwise
have been there. Situation comedy requires an interesting and original situation. Certain
lines are funny because they are said by specific characters whom you have come to know
and love. Humphries and Mr. Lucas, for example, share the age-old experience of a friend-
ship-born-of-misery. Both have rotten, bottom-of-the-pyramid jobs with a company that
treats its employees like dirt. But the two really do find solace in their friendship.
Humphries roots for Lucas to score with women. Lucas wishes Humphries the best in his
relations with men. As a result, both Humphries and Lucas have lives that are somewhat
less depressing than they might otherwise have been.
     Think also of the episode where Mrs. Slocombe got carried away by romantic dreams
about Mr. Humphries. Great comedy really can grow out of stark tragedy.
     If we are now going revisionist - and declaring that Humphries was actually a closet
heterosexual - then ARE YOU BEING SERVED? becomes just an endless stream of knickers jokes.

Inman & Out

     Speaking of which - the pretense of Humphries being heterosexual was one of the many
reasons why the sequel - ARE YOU BEING SERVED? AGAIN - was such a phenomenal crashing
bore. This series, known in Britain as GRACE & FAVOUR, was probably the worst thing to
happen to British television since the Luftwaffe.
     Where the original series was hardly a hallmark of proletarian realism, GRACE &
FAVOUR was just an act of idiocy. Inman and several other survivors of Grace Bros. take
over a country inn and run it as a hotel. (Please, please, please do not ask why.) The
nearby farm folk seem to have recently arrived from Mars, but speak in accents out of some
Fifteenth Century Yorkshire insane asylum. One of them, a beautiful young girl, falls in
love with Mr. Humphries. He, of course, is delighted at this change in lifestyle and
chance to become sexually "normal."
     Now, when this sort of thing happens in real life, the end result is almost always an
extremely depressed young woman. Since the show was far too G-rated to actually discuss
the nature of their bedroom antics, one was left with the inescapable conclusion that...
nah. Not possible. De ningun manera! There is simply no way that relationship was ever
consummated.
     All of which would have been perfectly acceptable in a VICAR OF DIBLEY sort of way,
had GRACE & FAVOUR at least been funny. It wasn't. While Inman's neo-homophobic performance
insulted the intelligence of the average woodchuck, it qualified as delightful comedy in
contrast to the priapic panderings of his co-stars. The whole thing was about as funny as
watching a sheep die.
     GRACE & FAVOUR, however, was not the ultimate nadir of Inman's career in sitcoms.
That had been achieved a few years earlier with TAKE A LETTER, MR. JONES, where Inman
played the male secretary of a woman business executive, who was herself portrayed by the
immortal Rula Lenska.
     In that comedy, Inman's character was content to bask in the reflected happiness of
that forceful, masterly woman, for whom he happily performed an endless series of sub-
missive chores in a highly disciplined manner.
     Give Inman time here. I guarantee that, in another five or six years, he'll be
granting interviews which state that TAKE A LETTER, MR. JONES was not about female sexual
dominance.
     And, to give Inman his due - _they_actually_said_ that it was. They just spelled it
out in the body language and the facial expressions and the double entendres and...

Dan Abramson