Come Back Mrs. Noah

1970s British tv sitcom

A housewife, Gertrude Noah, while visiting a spaceship, accidentally ends up on the Earth’s orbit together with 4 other people, who don’t really belong there.

A middle-aged housewife, Gertrude Noah, won in a cookery competition a tour of Britannia Seven, a newly built spaceship that is being prepared to be shot into the space. Due to technical problems the five people aboard the spaceship end up on the orbit. Apart from Mrs. Noah there are two scientists on board, unfortunately they are mathematicians, who know very little about the spaceship, an engineer, whose job was to replace bulbs and a journalist, who was filming Mrs Noah’s tour for the TV station. The five of them have to adapt to this new situation and find the way down to Earth. Meanwhile the rescue efforts are taken back in United Kingdom, most which are... well-meaning, but fruitless.

Sitcom created by famous Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft, while they were still working on Are You Being Served? and starring Mollie Sugden from Are You Being Served?. Rest of the cast was filled with actors they knew from their other productions (Ian Lavender from Dad’s Army, Michael Knowles and Donald Hewlett from It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, and in smaller part Gorden Kaye, who later was star of ’Allo ’Allo). All of it sounds like a perfect combination - two skilled writers and cast full of experienced actors.

Unfortunately the reality was not that simple. Jeremy Lloyd was still involved in Are You Being Served?, David Croft was involved in Are You Being Served? and It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, which would explain why Come Back Mrs. Noah, despite clearly having budget for the production, feels like a side-project. The cast was good, the premise was ok, but most of the episodes were average at best.

The whole series looks like the least appealing side of Are You Being Served? - the part in which the main characters spend entire episodes just playing with props or dress in weird costumes. It didn’t work well in Are You Being Served? and unfortunately it didn’t help Come Back Mrs. Noah either. The two slightly better elements, the Hewlett and Knowles as pair of not very bright scientists and bitter exchanges between Mrs Noah and journalist Clive Cunliffe, are just copies from other series. Knowles and Hewlett played at the same time almost identical characters in It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, while the chemistry between Mollie Sugden and Ian Lavender was exactly what was going on between Mollie Sugden and Trevor Bannister in Are You Being Served?.

The setting in the future gave some breathing space to introduce additional characters, like TV presenter reading futuristic news or space ace Garfield Hawk, but still the series felt very claustrophobic and one-layered, which was unusual for David Croft production. His sitcoms (past and future) always had large casts, full of colourful characters and interactions, while here we have five people locked in just few interiors. Well, four to be fair, because the character of engineer Garstang was needed just for few jokes.

Come Back Mrs. Noah had a potential, but lack of original or interesting characters and too much emphasis being placed on physical comedy or prop-related comedy, locked that sitcom in a very small box. Which is a shame, because it might have been something more, perhaps if Lloyd and Croft would concentrate on this project and not just rush it as unusual incarnation of Are You Being Served? mixed with bit of It Ain’t Half Hot Mum.

Rating	5.2
Funny	4 / 10
Entertaining	3 / 5
Characters	3 / 5
Nonrepetitive	3 / 5