LAST NIGHT’S TV Garnet American style

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33656, 4 October 1974, Page 14

LAST NIGHT’S TV Garnet American style

Alf Garnet — Americanstyle — returned to television last night, and there was no evidence to suggest that “All in The Family” will be any less popular in this new series than it was before.

Carroll O’Connor played Archie Bunker with enormous enthusiasm, and if the format of the show is just as it was, there really has not been any need for change. Archie has a sufficiently wide range of prejudices to keep a large team of scriptwriters very busy. Last night there was Watergate at first, racial disharmony to follow, with Archie summing up his feelings about the prospects of a second Negro neighbour in one imperishable phrase: “One coloured family is a novelty. TWo is a ghetto.” This top-ranking American comedy has an excellent team which has much more of value to say through its comedy than any of its rivals save perhaps M*A*S*H. Carroll O’Connor produces his malapropisms with practiced ease, and his expression of disenchantment — directed usually at his wife, Edith — is used sparingly, but with delightful effect.: Jean Stapleton won some! sort of award for her performance as Edith, an expert in good-humoured inanity. Rob Reiner is back as the son-in-law to conduct his usual running battle with Archie, and again there is little Sally Struthers to aid and abet him. “All in The Family” is as boisterous and noisy as most American comedies. Nearly everything in the script is shouted. But in the Bunker household this seems right and reasonable, where in other shows it is often an offence to the ear. The Bunkers will enliven Thursday evenings not only because much of “All in The Family” is genuinely funny, but also because it pleads in its roundabout way for sanity and sweet reason. Handled as it is competently, it makes first-rate television. I —R.T.B.-