Citizen Smith: There’s Something About Wolfie

So, do you want the short version or the long version?

For those interested in a more concise review, Red Footsie Pajamas Man and his captor (who I think of as “failed Colin Farrell lookalike”) are here with their views.  (Thanks Lisa for letting me steal your act!)  Some mildly strong language ahead:

However, for those who can bear with me a little longer, there is a lot more to say about the four seasons of Citizen Smith.  First aired between 1977 and 1980, this first comedy by John Sullivan was not (to my mind) just the forerunner of Only Fools and Horses.

This is not to say that there aren’t common factors at work.  The setup of Citizen Smith has many elements that would later be developed by Sullivan in Only Fools and Horses.  The charming, well meaning but somewhat morally flexible central character (Wolfie Smith, a self-defined urban guerrilla living with his girlfriend’s parents and doing all he can to avoid taking a job); the long suffering partner from a more aspirational class background (Shirley, the nice middle class girl whose romance with Wolfie drives her father to distraction); the nice but slightly dopey sidekick (Ken, Wolfie’s right hand man and a spiritual dabbler); the local businessman and crime lord (Harry Fenning, owner of Wolfie’s local pub and keeper of his slate); and an assortment of petty criminal types, more or less good at heart, who constitute both the membership and the immediate target demographic of the Tooting Popular Front.  There’s also a distinct similarity in the humour, including those jokes which were so current in the 1970s and so cringe-inducing right now.

There’s certainly a degree of continuity between the two, and the fact that Citizen Smith has hardly if ever (to my memory) been repeated on UK television – in contrast with Only Fools and Horses, which is more or less shown on a loop  – has done much to reduce it to the role of rough draft for a later masterpiece.  However, this would be an unfair assessment of a comedy series which is not only very solid in its own right, but enjoyed great success at the time is was aired.  As Wolfie might say, relegating it to the shadow of Only Fools and Horses is arguably a bit of false consciousness, innit?

I’m very much aware of this because I bought the complete Citizen Smith on DVD out of sheer curiosity.  Despite being a TV comedy geek, all I knew of Citizen Smith was that people kept mentioning it with relation to socialism in the UK; as if it were some kind of shorthand for British Trotskyism and socialist militancy, a shorthand that might be affectionate but was more often mildly derogatory.  So when I saw it on sale at a nicely reduced price, I thought I might as well see the damn thing and find out what all this Wolfie Smith business was about.  I didn’t expect to be so entertained, and I certainly didn’t expect to fall in love with Wolfie, who is every bit as charming and as fallible a creation as his successor Del Boy, albeit with a different dream.

What made Citizen Smith such an enjoyable thing for me (so enjoyable, in fact, that I just watched the entire run a second time)?  Part of it is undoubtedly what I have outlined above – the setup – which is one of the great strengths of Sullivan’s comic writing.  Another is the acting; I’d be hard pressed to say there’s a weak link in the chain.  Robert Lindsay brings out Wolfie’s charm as well as his flaws – I can’t help but wonder whether Wolfie, like Sir Humphrey, would be quite so endearing with a different actor – and his interactions with the loyal but vulnerable Ken, played by Mike Grady, see him shifting between self-defined revolutionary leader and soft-hearted best friend.  Cheryl Hall (who is only present in series 1 and 2) is an excellent counterweight to Wolfie’s frequent outbursts of revolutionary pompousness in her role as Shirley; while those same outbursts, often involving promises of revolutionary justice, are placed nicely in context by George Sweeney’s performance as thuggish comrade Speed, the only member of the Tooting Popular Front with more than a minor police record (until the finale of Series 3 and the invasion of Parliament).  Wolfie might threaten proletarian violence, but Speed will actually implement it, often to his comrades’ distress.

I particularly enjoyed Stephen Greif as local “legitimate businessman” Harry Fenning.  We never see Fenning lose his cool, because he never needs to; the viewer senses, just as strongly as the hapless Wolfie does, that the suave self-assured gangster is capable of terrible things.  Greif’s performance is such a gem and his character plays such a pivotal role in a number of great stories that I felt rather bereft when, at the beginning of Series 4, Harry Fenning was no more.

Indeed, my one real dissatisfaction was that Citizen Smith, like so many good comedies, went on a series too long.  Perhaps that’s a little unfair of me; the fourth series does have some truly enjoyable moments (particularly “The Final Try”, which is one of my favourite episodes overall).  But the events of the end of Series 3 constitutes such a natural high point, and the storyline of Series 4 requires such a series of twists and turns in order to right itself – right down to bringing back the occasional character of Inspector Tofkin, who was originally good comic relief but then became irritating to the highest degree – that I can’t help feel it’s all a little strained.

As for the question of politics and political satire: I feel that Citizen Smith is a satire on socialism only in the sense that Only Fools and Horses is a satire on capitalism.  Like Del Boy, Wolfie has a great dream that, in his mind, will one day solve all his problems; in his case, that dream is the revolution.  Making the revolution in North Tooting at that particular time is about as likely as becoming a millionaire selling knocked-off stereos in Peckham; and the comedy lies in that contrast between dream and reality, as well as in the gulf between Wolfie’s actions (or inactions) and his aspirations.  The nature of those aspirations is not as important as the way in which he wears them, and the ways in which he ultimately cannot quite live up to them.  That’s the comedy, and the tragedy, of Wolfie Smith.

Citizen Smith Series 1-4 is available on DVD from Playback.