The Dustbinmen

1960s British tv sitcom

Number 3 Gang - four completely different dustbin men (or how they prefer to be called refuse collectors), who have one thing in common - they devote their time to skiving and scheming to earn some money or at least drive their depot inspector mad.

Collecting garbage is awfully monotonous job. At least when you do it right, which they don’t. It could be awfully frustrating job. At least when you take care of the details, which they don’t. It is not well paid job. At least when you are upright, which they aren’t. Four completely different men drive every day in their dustcart and not even really try to look busy. Cheese & Egg is the leader of the crew - a home-grown philosopher and quite clever guy, who doesn’t let his job get in the way of his free mind. Heavy Breathing drives all the women, but he doesn’t seem to enjoy it very much. Winston is the driver and devoted Manchester City fan, who lives and breaths for his club. Eric is... Eric - a bit shy and gawky young man, who follows his crew everywhere.

Jack Rosenthal, creator of The Dustbinmen, was most remembered as one of the main writers for soap opera Coronation Street, before he tried his talents with comedy. After Pardon the Expression, that was a spin-off from Coronation Street, he later wrote The Dustbinmen, The Lovers and About Face, but from that list The Dustbinmen is the one that had most original concept. Just like On the Buses this series was an instant hit - partly because in those times there were very few working class sitcoms, but also due to unusual approach to the genre. First of all The Dustbinmen from the beginning was mixture of absurd humour and colourful characters that appealed to wide range of viewers. But there was one more aspect - The Dustbinmen premiered soon after the large strike of the real dustbin men, which meant that more people at least took a peak since the topic was still in the news.

Jack Rosenthal wrote two first series, while later he deserted the project and various authors wrote the episodes of series 3. Those episodes that were written by Rosenthal were original, unconventional, but a bit chaotic and the characters were rather one-dimensional. Those episodes that were written by other people were more like episodes of any other sitcom, with a bit more depth, but they were a bit too predictable. When you put together those two part overall impression of the whole The Dustbinmen series is that it was original project, which unfortunately did not aged well. It takes some time to begin to like the characters, the unpredictable atmosphere of early episodes was good, but with time the episodes did not improved nor built any base that would carry The Dustbinmen beyond series 3.

Basically it still could be fun to watch them now, but The Dustbinmen were far from being masterpiece back in 1969 and they did not gained anything with time.

Rating	6.0
Funny	5 / 10
Entertaining	4 / 5
Characters	3 / 5
Nonrepetitive	3 / 5