Chalk and Cheese

1 9 7 9 (UK)
7 x 30 minute episodes

Riding the crest of a wave following massive successes with the BBC sitcom Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em and the London stage show Billy, Michael Crawford starred in this short-lived Thames series about a family of cockneys who live in a gentrified street. What larks . . .

Chalk And Cheese cast him as an unrestrained proletarian – the pig-headed, sexist, bearded Dave Finn, truculently living out his cockney adages and lifestyle in a posh street, a tin bath hanging on the front of his house like a badge of honour.

Robin Hawdon was cast as Finn’s adjoining neighbour, Roger Scott, a Sloane-style marketing director and the very antithesis of Finn.

The series explored these differences, which, under the mere superficialities of outlook, attitudes, values, dress and prospects, were, perhaps, not too dissimilar after all.

The series developed from a one-off comedy called Spasms, which was remade with the new cast as the first episode of this series which aired in April and May 1979.

Dave Finn
Michael Crawford
Roger Scott
Robin Hawdon
Amanda Scott
Julia Goodman
Rose Finn
Gillian Martell