Review of Growing Pains of PC Penrose, The

Introduction

PC Penrose (Paul Greenwood) is fresh out of Police College and posted to his new station in Slagchester. He`s a rather delicate soul, wanting to make an impression within the macho force but a bit concerned at his nickname `Rosie`; guaranteed to strike the fear of god into the criminal element in this hard Yorkshire town. Wherever he goes, Rosie causes heart to go a fluttering in the female population, but his actual police work is either non-existent or incompetent.

His new mentor is the `ard as nails and well shouty Sgt Flagg (Bryan Pringle), a man of the old school who also operates his own brand of law in his town. Also helping out are PC`s Buttress (David Pinner) and Toombs (Alan Foss); Buttress is newly married but still having it away with anything in a skirt, whilst old man Toombs is nearer to retirement than Danny Glover ever was and so does his best not to do anything at all strenuous.

Elsewhere, in a move that seems to be completely unrelated to the goings-on over at Slagchester, Inspector Fox (Christopher Burgess) is honing his act in being a complete swine. Aiding and abetting him in this is the rather naïve and comely WPC Dean (Catherine Chase), his personal assistant who seems to have fallen for him in reasons that are both baffling and nonsensical. Fox is more interested in progressing his career than anything-else and seems to make it his mission now and again to get one over on Flagg.

And so, that in a nutshell is the plot of this 7 episode series from Roy Clarke, the same pen that brought us Last Of The Summer Wine, Open All Hours and Keeping Up Appearances. Great…

Video

Picture is 4:3 and a bit grainy. The outside shots are all a bit gloomy (it`s grim oop North, y`know…) and the inside shots are the worst kind of obvious sets. So 70`s…

Audio

It`s sutitled, which doesn`t really aid the comprehension of a script that`s clearly for the funny bones of a completely different generation. Incidental music is from a brass band, probably from t`pit, for that authentic Yorkshire appeal.

Features

Nowt, nary a sausage…

Conclusion

Good god. This passed for comedy? In the 70`s? So much for the decade of Monty Python, Fawlty Towers and Porridge. I can`t believe I`ve just sat through nearly 3 ½ hours of that just to write this review, but then someone has to sacrifice themselves on the altar of banality to warn off others. This time it`s me, your turn next hopefully…

I`m not quite sure if this series was made just for Southern jessies to laugh at Northerners and so reinforce the North/South divide. Surely no self-respecting Yorkshireman could have penned something so awful about their home county. Mind, I read on iMDB that Clarke is from East Yorkshire, so that`s alright.

And I know it was the 70`s, the last decade of real political incorrectness, but Slagchester? C`mon. Please. This is the level of humour found here though, nothing that funny, but a constant stream of innuendo`s about sex, flashing and fiddling, and sex crimes and domestic abuse that are treat as amusing rather than any form of seriousness. It might be from another time, but it`s just not funny and I was really struggling to watch anything past episode 2, I just told myself that after 3 hours I`d never have to see it again.

Bryan Pringle`s character seems to want to be a Police version of Windsor Davies, but struggles to fill his boots. The plots are non-existent, there just appear to be a load of set pieces that are just pushed together, particularly with the split narratives between Rosie/Flagg, etc and Fox and Dean. I hated it.

There was a follow-up series a few years later, imaginatively titled `Rosie` but with a different setting and cast. I`m just hoping they never get the idea that it will be worth releasing…