How’s Your Father?

1 9 7 4 – 1 9 7 5 (UK)
13 x 30 minute episodes

Focusing on the generation gap, this Granada sitcom featured three generations of Edwards – rascally grandfather Ted (Arthur English), father Eddie (Michael Robbins, the star of the series, fresh from the recently ended On The Buses) and his drop-out son Edward (Nicholas Hoye).

Eddie is caught in the middle, able to comprehend neither his father nor his son, although the two of them get along together perfectly well. And there’s more trouble on the domestic front because Eddie also fails to understand his liberated wife Doreen and his flighty daughter Christine.

There’s little refuge at work, either: Eddie is employed by an insurance company – reporting to Reginald Marsh, the archetypal office boss in several sitcoms of the period – so, what with the goings-on in Laburnum Avenue and the troubles in the office, Eddie sure has his problems.

A decade after this, After Henry explored similar tri-generation gap themes but from the distaff side.

Not to be confused with the 1979 sitcom of the same name starring Harry Worth as a recently widowed father bringing up two teenagers.

Eddie Cropper
Michael Robbins
Ted Cropper
Arthur English
Doreen Cropper
Barbara Young (1)
Rosemary Martin (2)
Edward Cropper
Nicholas Hoye
Christine Cropper
Georgina Moon
Ivy Watkins
Sheila Steafel
Mr Winterbottom
Reginald Marsh