Curry and Chips
| Curry and Chips | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Starring |
Spike Milligan Eric Sykes Norman Rossington Kenny Lynch |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of series | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 6 |
| Production | |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Release | |
| Original network | ITV |
| Original release | 21 November – 26 December 1969 |
Curry and Chips is a short lived British sitcom broadcast in 1969 which was produced by London Weekend Television for the ITV network.
Set on a factory floor of 'Lillicrap Ltd', it starred a blacked up Spike Milligan as an Asian immigrant who went by the name of Kevin O'Grady. It also featured Eric Sykes as the foreman, Norman Rossington as the shop steward, and other regulars were Kenny Lynch, and Sam Kydd. The series was written by Till Death Us Do Part writer Johnny Speight, but based on idea by Milligan.
It was the first LWT sitcom to be broadcast in its entirety in colour, and all episodes still exist.
The ambition of Curry and Chips was to highlight discrimination, rather than promote it. The Independent Television Authority disagreed, and Curry and Chips was cancelled by them after only six episodes. Speight himself later remarked: "It was the English who were made to look bigoted in the show but the people at the ITA couldn't understand that. It was London Weekend Television's first year, but only six shows went out. The ITA made LWT take it off, saying it was racist." They weren't alone, as amongst those who originally complained about the show were the Race Relations Board.
Screenonline says of the show "though it again attempted to raise important questions, [it] lacked a strong enough voice to challenge the racist attitudes of its characters, and too much of its humour relied on the use of crude racial abuse and Milligan's caricatured performance as the charmlessly-nicknamed 'Paki Paddy'. The shocked reaction from some viewers and cultural commentators led to the show being dropped by ITV after just six episodes, and in retrospect it's hard to understand how Speight and LWT can have failed to anticipate the offence it caused."
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