An Evening At Home

1951 - United Kingdom

Canadian husband and wife team Bernard Braden and Barbara Kelly entered British television with a series of their own in 1951 called An Evening At Home. This was a set of inconsequential programmes with the Braden's joined by Welsh actor George Benson, notable as a comic support in roles with George Formby (Keep Fit - 1937) and Ronnie Barker (A Home of Your Own - 1964) and actress Hestor Paton-Brown. 

They were joined by occasional small-part character players or the odd guest artiste. Intended to take the camera informally inside the Braden home (allegedly), the series caused, according to The Television Annual for 1952, 'violent argument' among viewers as to its effectiveness. Fortunately, there are no records of anyone being arrested for these differences of opinion. Despite some neat production work by Thomas Leslie Jackson (a newcomer who went on to produce What's My Line?, Call My Bluff and This Is Your Life), the series barely succeeded, probably-the TV Annual opined-owing to its dependence on the quaint idea of Canadian women that husbands are schoolboys with adult earning power. A suggestion in 1951 that would have sat very unsteadily on the male ego. 

Published on November 27th, 2018. Adapted from the Television Annual for 1952.

Read Next...

"He was a pioneer", wrote Nicholas Parsons, "the first person to do 'topical satire' on television, but as the phrase had not yet been coined, and as the sketches were part of conventional variety shows, he never received the credit he deserved for originality."

Also released in 1951

Although slammed by the critics The Abbott and Costello Show became a firm favourite with the viewing audience as the comic twosome brought to the small screen the same brand of slapstick humour that had pulled in theatre patrons for years.

Also released in 1951

Created by TV comedy legends Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft, who were responsible for some of the longest running sitcoms on British television, 'Allo 'Allo! was a wartime comedy created as a parody of Secret Army.

Also tagged British Comedy

One of the very earliest situation comedy successes for the fledgling Channel 4, Chance in a Million chronicled the misadventures of one Tom Chance, a slightly eccentric, but decent ordinary man with an unnatural ability to warp probability to ludicrous proportions.

Also tagged Situation Comedy

On The Braden Beat was the most popular and best remembered TV series of the 1960s to champion the cause of the unwary purchaser against the unscrupulous seller.

Also starring Bernard Braden

Long-running 1950s afternoon programme designed to help women improve their domestic skills with tips on everything they could wish to know about from cookery to soft furnishings and needlework to bringing up baby and doing their own DIY.

Also released in 1951

Jimmy Edwards series of one-off sitcoms that introduced a minor supporting character actor who would go on to become 'the guv'nor' of British comedy...Ronnie Barker.

Also tagged Situation Comedy

The Dustbinmen were led by their foreman, the foul-mouthed, beret-wearing Cheese and Egg, and accompanying him on the Corporation Cleansing Department dust cart were an equally obnoxious crew of work-shy, housewife-lusting individuals.

Also tagged Situation Comedy

Quiz show in which a panel of guest celebrities attempt to guess the occupation of people unknown to them.

Also starring Barbara Kelly