Mollie Sugden was one of the funniest women in British entertainment. Not so much a comedienne as that even rarer phenomenon - a female clown.
She had that indefinable quality that some refer to as 'funny-bones'. Tommy Cooper was another who had 'em in extreme. He could cause laughter by doing simply nothing at all.
But Molly didn't write her own material. She needed a good script from people who understood her qualities and could bring them to the fore. And although the writers of 'Mrs Noah' also wrote 'Are You Being Served', that other program contained a host of extremely comical and well-observed stereotypes of which Molly Sugden was just one.
The other characters in 'Mrs Noah' were nowhere near as well-defined as those at Grace Brothers', and as a result Molly Sugden was pretty well left to carry the show alone. If the script had been a really funny one - like that of 'Red Dwarf' - the format might have worked, but the humour was such a sub-Carry-On, lack-lustre effort that it only got off the launching pad courtesy of Molly's unusual willingness to clown it. Her preposterous body language and facial expressions were easily funnier than the gags. But they simply were not enough to save the idea beyond perhaps a single episode.
She had that indefinable quality that some refer to as 'funny-bones'. Tommy Cooper was another who had 'em in extreme. He could cause laughter by doing simply nothing at all.
But Molly didn't write her own material. She needed a good script from people who understood her qualities and could bring them to the fore. And although the writers of 'Mrs Noah' also wrote 'Are You Being Served', that other program contained a host of extremely comical and well-observed stereotypes of which Molly Sugden was just one.
The other characters in 'Mrs Noah' were nowhere near as well-defined as those at Grace Brothers', and as a result Molly Sugden was pretty well left to carry the show alone. If the script had been a really funny one - like that of 'Red Dwarf' - the format might have worked, but the humour was such a sub-Carry-On, lack-lustre effort that it only got off the launching pad courtesy of Molly's unusual willingness to clown it. Her preposterous body language and facial expressions were easily funnier than the gags. But they simply were not enough to save the idea beyond perhaps a single episode.