Comrade Dad

1 9 8 4 (UK)
1 x 30 minute episode
1 9 8 6 (UK)
7 x 30 minute episodes

In an alternative future, Great Britain is part of the USSR in 1999 following a bloodless coup ten years earlier and there’s a giant revolving red star in Trafalgar Square in ‘Londongrad’ where the statue of Nelson used to be.

Milton Keynes has been surrounded with barbed wire and turned into a Gulag for opponents of the new regime and women have been sent out to work as navvies, repairing roads and laying railway tracks.

It’s an imperfect situation but one that pleases Reg, the “Comrade Dad” of the cockney Dudgeon family, comprising wife Treen (Barbara Ewing), son Bob (David Garlick), daughter Zo (Claire Toeman) and Gran (Doris Hare).

Reg (Minder star George Cole) – a kind of Marxist Alf Garnett – is forever scolding his family that it is as all for the best (despite the shortages, beetroot diet, bureaucracy and repression) and exalting the great leader Chairman Hoskins – always with one eye cast skywards, mindful of the listening satellites.

The short-lived series was written by Peter Vincent and Ian Davidson.

Reg Dudgeon
George Cole
Treen Dudgeon
Barbara Ewing
Gran
Doris Hare
Zo Dudgeon
Claire Toeman
Bob Dudgeon
David Garlick

Episodes

Comrade Dad (Pilot) || Londongrad 1999 | Don’t Feel Bad, Dad | The Lost Domain | Of Gods and Heroes | Dangerous Connections | My Vegetable Love | Cars That Pass in the Night