That was an excellent one.

Simply Perfect

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Like 'On The Buses', 'Love Thy Neighbour' ran on ITV for almost half a decade, yet is hardly remembered now. It starred Mancunian actor Jack Smethurst as racist Eddie Booth and West Indian born Rudolph Walker as his equally bigoted next-door neighbour Bill Reynolds. The comedy stemmed from the pair's frequent attempts to get one over on each other, which more often than not would see Eddie coming off the worst. Despite the fact that it is obvious that the show's intention is to poke fun at bigotry rather than glorify it, its use of racial language alone has insured that repeats have been blocked, which is a shame as 'Love Thy Neighbour' is to my mind one of the best sitcoms of the '70's.Would-be Socialist Eddie Booth lives in Maple Terrace, Twickenham and is happily married to his lovely wife Joan ( Kate Williams ). One day, his idyllic lifestyle is shattered when Bill Reynolds and his wife Barbie ( Nina Baden Semper ) move into the house next door. Eddie, being insufferably bigoted, does not take well to this at all and attempts in vain to force them out. During the show's run, Eddie and Bill were to be seen squabbling over the most trivial of things. When Bill boasted about how good he was at limbo dancing, Eddie tried to one-up him by claiming he was far better at it, even though he hadn't the faintest idea how to limbo dance and when Bill bought a new car, Eddie had to follow suit and buy one. Joan and Barbie, however, got on rather well, though they too had their moments of childish bickering.'Love Thy Neighbour' ran for seven series and ( for the most part ) made for excellent viewing. One thing detractors should take note of is that on a number of occasions, Bill and Eddie got on well and were sometimes to be seen looking out for and depending on one another. When Eddie accidentally smashed another neighbour's window, Bill took the blame for it. When the electricity board threatened to cut off Bill's supply due to an unpaid bill, Eddie confronted the board manager and demanded he correct the error.Vince Powell and Harry Driver wrote the scripts initially but when Driver died in 1973, Powell wrote the scripts alone until new writers such as Adele Rose and H.V. Kershaw came aboard. A feature film went on release in 1973 and in the early '80's a remake was made for Australian television in which Eddie went to work down under.Jack Smethurst was wonderful as Booth, a man so stupid and ( to an extent ) snobbish as to make Alf Garnett look like the Ark Angel Gabriel. Rudolph Walker's Bill got a lot of laughs as he frequently made his neighbour come a cropper. It was Kate Williams who made the biggest impression on yours truly as Eddie's put-upon wife Joan. This fine actress has comedy in her blood ( watch her in 'Holiday On The Buses' and 'May To December' if you don't believe me ). Also hilarious in their own right were Tommy Godfrey and Keith Marsh as Eddie and Bill's friends Arthur and Jacko ( ''I'll have 'alf!'' ). Paul Luty was also impressive as Nobby, the barman of Eddie's local club. I found Nina Baden Semper's character annoying but all the same without her the show would not seem as complete.In the era of Frankie Boyle and Sacha Baron Cohen, I fail to see how anyone can be offended by this. Trust me, compared to the two aforementioned, it is tame. Now that it is all out on DVD, you can watch it for yourself and make up your own mind about it.

Now let the PC police shoot me, and I know Love Thy Neighbour has as much chance as being shown on peak time television again as Blyth Spartans winning the European Cup, but I didn't think it was a bad show and was quite amusing.In the early seventies Till Death Do Us Part was a massive hit on the BBC, where a white working class Tory put the world to rights every week and usually got into blazing rows over issues such as race an the permissive society with his more progressive daughter and son in law. Audience figures of over 20 million persuaded ITV that they needed a rival and commissioned Vince Powell, famous for writing scripts on Coronation St in the sixties and creating a string of sit com hits, to come up with a rival to Till Death.Love Thy Neighbour was ITV's answer. Basically Alf Garnett was replaced by Eddie Booth ( Jack Smethurst), a similarly downwardly mobile bigoted white man, but with one difference, he was a staunch Labour union man who was bigoted because he saw blacks as undermining pay and conditions at work. Not surprisingly when a Tory voting black couple moved next door he was less than pleased, especially as they seemed to be better off than him. Thus the scene was set for the most controversial, and one of the most popular sitcoms, of all time.Typically an episode would start with Eddie trading insults with Bill Reynolds, his black neighbour, morning, sambo would be followed with morning, white honkey, and should Bill( Rudolph Walker) catch Eddie eyeing up his attractive wife, then all hell would break loose. However, both wives got on and often acted as peacemakers between the two. Also memorable was the elderly shop steward, Jacko, who was quite friendly to Bill, and his catchphrase I'll have an arf became popular.Love Thy Neighbour was quite amusing for its time and watching an episode where Bill buys a Triumph sports car and Eddie buys a £ 10 banger to try and compete( the doors fall off as soon as the car starts) is hilarious. However, being an ITV show, those expecting Alf Garnett style rants will be disappointed as for all the racist names are used frequently, the humour is gentler than the Alf Garnett variety and there are few of the political dogfights that made Till Death so amusing. However, Vince Powell did a nice role reversal as Eddie Booth, apart from on race, is rather to the left of Alf Garnett and Bill Reynolds is his polar opposite politically.I would recommend Love Thy Neighbour to anyone who wants to see what amused us in the seventies and how the comedy climate has changed in the last 40 years.

This show has to be taken and viewed in the context it was written in.As a black man born in the early 70's, this show is funny for all the people of my parents age I mentioned it to. 'Political Correctness' is more about white people feeling comfortable with what other white people say in their presence, than making black people feel comfortable about whats said to them by white people. Eddie Booth takes the brunt of nearly every episode as his ignorance shows him to be the fool so often. His bigoted ways always showed him up to be the narrow minded, unintelligent idiot he is and regularly needed his wife's help to set him straight.Fair enough, its not everyones cup of tea, but it is funny and to think it got shelved from being re-run because of our over protective PC fanatics thought it would re-ignite racism in our streets is a shame. News is that racism hasn't gone and will never go and considering racism is a learnt behaviour, if parents want to educate their young children to be racist, they will just get the DVDs at home and let them watch it that way. ted00043 from Australia just doesn't get the show. Its like a die-hard Columbo viewer watching Bablyon 5; it messes with their head.If your going to do it, do it properly. Ban it all together (from our shelves, TV and archives) or let it be seen by everyone, everywhere.

I recently began watching this series at school for media. Though it is hard to watch this from a modern (2007) point of view, you have to remember that lots of things that we see as being politically and socially incorrect for this day and age, taken back 30 years, would have been considered the norm. Eddie Booth, the predominant white male, is a comical representation of the (then) typical, white union member. Joan Booth is the typical white housewife, bending to her husband's every need by having dinner on the table when he gets home and having the house tidy. (Remember this was before the Feminist movement in the UK.) Bill Reynolds, the predominant black male, is a representation of the incoming black community of the early 1970's. Barbie Reynolds is very much seen in the same way as Joan, as a typical housewife, though is presented as being more sexual that Joan, who sees sex as being a chore every Wednesday and Saturday night. I originally had a problem watching this series because of all the racist slurs etc. but then, I took a step back and instead of watching it from a 2007 p.o.v, watched it as though I was living in the time. After you realise that, in the early 70's this would not have been seen as racist, it was just showing the dominant social value of the time, this programme is much more enjoyable...Even if you do eventually have to do an exam on it...