Developing out of a skit on The Naked Vicar Show, this was a highly popular sit-com that, as Moran notes in his Guide to Australian TV Series, 'rivalled the success of My Name's McGooley in the 1960s and was surpassed only by the success of Hey Dad on the same network a few years later.
The series centred on the Bulpitt family, particularly patriarch Ted: a bigoted, conservative, blue-collar Australian and WWII veteran devoted to television, his racing greyhounds, and his Holden Kingswood.
Despite its popularity, the program was criticised for the out-spoken bigotry of its protagonist, including (but not exclusively) towards his Italian son-in-law.
Moran says of the program that 'The series was well plotted and funny, most especially Ross Higgins in the role of Ted.'
The Naked Vicar Show
Australia
:
RS Productions
,
1977-1978
Z1828950
1977-1978
series - publisher
film/TV
A skit comedy show that began on ABC Radio, The Naked Vicar Show ran on Channel Seven from 1977 to 1978.
According to Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, the program 'was Seven's most popular comedy variety series between The Mavis Bramston Show in the early 1960s and Fast Forward in the late 1980s'.
According to an article published by Peter Tatchell:
The television format was much the same as the radio version with more lampoons of commercials and series and a Bramston-like news bulletin at the beginning and end of each programme (replacing Higgins' sermon as the Vicar, who was no longer featured). Regulars Bruce, the arty-crafties Craig, Val and Geoffrey and gardeners Ces and Cyril all made the transition and many classic sketches were simply redone in vision.
The Seven editions also saw the introduction of car-worshipper Ted Bullpitt and his wife Thel, who quickly became favourites and eventually spawned their own sitcom Kingswood Country. Another popular segment updated the radio duo of Lois and NareIle, though apart from a brief reworking of the Oath K' Noath routine in their first appearance, the pair were now almost totally different characters. Instead of gossipy housewives, they became a man-hungry typist who relates her romantic misadventures to the office tealady. Taking over the Narelle Hudson role from Ross Higgins, Julie McGregor created one of Australian television's most enduring characterisations and scored a personal triumph.
Source: Peter Tatchell, 'Radio: The Naked Vicar Show', Laugh Magazine 14 (1996), republished on Laughterlog (http://laughterlog.com/2009/02/13/radio-the-naked-vicar-show/). Sighted: 1/12/2011
'Stephen Fry has described the typical American comic hero as a freewheeling “wisecracker” compared to the English type, who is apt to be an aspirational lower-middle-class failure. With Fry as a prompt, we consider humour and class in the evolution—or devolution—of that representative local hero, the larrikin, during Australian television’s first three decades. This was a period that saw a realignment of the nation’s political, economic and cultural affiliations away from Britain towards the US, and in which the ocker came into sudden prominence as a less benign version of rowdy male identity. If media larrikins such as Graham Kennedy and Paul Hogan excelled at the kind of sketch-based humour that had its origins in vaudeville and were unsuited to sitcoms, ocker characters such as Wally Stiller from My Name’s McGooley and Ted Bullpitt from Kingswood Country found a home there. Our analysis of larrikin and ocker humour is triangulated with that of Norman Gunston, as played by Garry McDonald: a desperately aspirational failure with his own mock variety show who emerged from the dialogue between these two comic types. We conclude with some thoughts on post-ockerism and the emergence of the bogan.' (Publication abstract)
'Stephen Fry has described the typical American comic hero as a freewheeling “wisecracker” compared to the English type, who is apt to be an aspirational lower-middle-class failure. With Fry as a prompt, we consider humour and class in the evolution—or devolution—of that representative local hero, the larrikin, during Australian television’s first three decades. This was a period that saw a realignment of the nation’s political, economic and cultural affiliations away from Britain towards the US, and in which the ocker came into sudden prominence as a less benign version of rowdy male identity. If media larrikins such as Graham Kennedy and Paul Hogan excelled at the kind of sketch-based humour that had its origins in vaudeville and were unsuited to sitcoms, ocker characters such as Wally Stiller from My Name’s McGooley and Ted Bullpitt from Kingswood Country found a home there. Our analysis of larrikin and ocker humour is triangulated with that of Norman Gunston, as played by Garry McDonald: a desperately aspirational failure with his own mock variety show who emerged from the dialogue between these two comic types. We conclude with some thoughts on post-ockerism and the emergence of the bogan.' (Publication abstract)
