Robert Gillespie’s Dudley Rush draws naughty cartoons for a living, but the real comedy happens when he tries to outwit wife Pauline Yates, teenage daughters Sabina Franklin and Stacy Dorning, and permanently exasperated agent Glyn Houston in their south-west London terrace. Thames Television shot 31 episodes across five series between 1980 and 1983, each one a brisk exercise in domestic guerrilla warfare, with Dudley’s schemes collapsing under the combined weight of female common sense and his own vanity. Creator Brian Cooke recycled the same battle-of-the-sexes mechanics he had honed on Robins’ Nest and George & Mildred, only this time the man is hopelessly outgunned at home. The show’s only nod to the outside world is Burt Kwouk’s occasional turn as a bemused restaurateur, forever witnessing another Rush family meltdown over prawn cocktails. American viewers later saw the premise rebooted as Too Close for Comfort, but the original survives as a brittle time capsule of early-Eighties ITV sitcom craft, its laughter track almost as loud as Yates’s withering stare.
Production Details
ITV1 / 5 Seasons / 31 Episodes / 1980
Created by: Brian Cooke
Writer(s): Greg Freeman
Main Cast
Glyn Houston as
Burt Kwouk as
