Saturday, 15 August 2015

Come Back Mrs Noah on BBC DVD (and VHS!)

There are some TV shows that are still crying out for a DVD release. One of these is the sadly maligned 70s sitcom 'Come Back Mrs Noah'.

From the writers of 'Are You being Served?' - Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft - the show was a starring vehicle for Mollie Sugden. She played an ordinary British housewife who - after winning a national cookery competition - finds herself trapped on a British space station as it blasts off into Earth orbit. It also featured Donald Hewlett and Michael Knowles from 'It Ain't 'Alf Hot Mum' and Ian Lavender from 'Dad's Army'. There was also early roles for 'Allo Allo's Gordon Kaye (as a newsreader) and Vicki Michelle

It's never been released commercially or, indeed, been repeated. This is probably because it was a huge flop at the time of its original broadcast - garnering poor ratings and reviews. Clips appear with alarming regularity on TV shows about the worst TV ever - often out of context so the viewer is given little opportunity to make their own mind up. 

During the halcyon days of the BBC releasing everything and its aunty on VHS and DVD, I had hoped it might slip through - on the heels of its illustrious predecessors like 'Are You Being Served?' and 'Dad's Army'. Sadly this was not the case. 

So this little DVD sleeve here is a little taste of what could've been...





(As a footnote, here's a rare VHS sleeve from the programme's US release back in the 1980s. As was the case with many 'foreign' films and TV shows, 'Come Back Mrs Noah' was heavily re-edited, re-formatted and re-titled into something the producers thought would be more palatable to the American market - a hard hitting sci-fi thriller...)