Before he was The Phantom of the Opera, Michael Crawford was best known as the bumbling, tumbling, luck-resistant Frank Spencer in Raymond Allen's "Some Mother's Do 'Ave 'Em," who "can't touch a single thing in this house without bending it, breaking it or losing it." As one classic episode opens his wife and mother in law are at the point of despair. Frank just can't seem to hold down a job and even his new wife Betty (Michelle Dotrice) confesses "Sometimes when I look at you I get so depressed." Whether he's losing his mother-in-law's coal shed door or destroying the offices of a potential employer, Frank remains blissfully unaware of the living hell he makes life for others.
It can be quite a shock for Crawford's more recent fans, who know of him only through Broadway and Las Vegas, to see him bumbling his way through an automated "House of the Future"'s bathroom, destroying it, and, in the process, his brother-in-law's big sales presentation and the house itself. Rail thin and rubber-faced Crawford, in his characters ver present trench coat and beret, invests his performance with a humanity that other physical comedians would be at a loss to provide. Despite Spencer's uncanny knack of destroying everything and anyone within 100 meters, we can't help but sympathize - if not love or empathize - with him.
"Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em" is the ultimate in television slapstick. Not since the salad days of The Three Stooges has physical humor worked so well. Crawford's kamikaze dedication to his role, doing his own death-defying stunts, a la Jackie Chan. Lodging his head in a toilet, being dragged along by a moving train, tumbling down staircases, careening down ramps on hospital trolleys, being buried under a couple of tons of gravel - you name it, Crawford, as Spencer, does it.
As with most great britcoms the supporting cast, both re-occurring and guest spots, are top-notch and the scripts are crisp and inventive. All in all, "Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em" is more than worthy of its reputation as a classic britcom.
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