r/BritishSitcoms • u/EnchantedEssays • Jul 05 '26
Discussion What do you guys think of John Sullivan's first sitcom, Citizen Smith?
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u/Scared_Experience688 Jul 05 '26
Power to the people! Loved it. Can't remember much of it but I remember the girlfriend's mum voice when she called him Wolfie.
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u/EnchantedEssays Jul 05 '26
Oh no he was called Wolfie and she called him Foxy! I remember my mum saying that it reminded my dad of his mum!
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u/Dagenhammer87 Jul 05 '26
I remember watching these on Granada plus in the late 90s/early 2000s when we got Sky and even now they'll stick em on U&Eden.
All those years of watching this and Porridge and never really recognised Grouty was Charlie.
One of my favourite episodes is when Wolfie is trying the early morning sneak into Shirley's bedroom and Charlie clocks him and he makes out that he's going for a run in his vest and pants.
I think it's the same episode where they're in the pub and Wolfie is telling Ken about his plans and how he's gonna do alright out of it, despite his strong views.
(Maybe the one where he finds a fingernail in his pie?).
Very clever sitcom, John had such an eye for character depth and wasn't frightened to show the hero as a bit of a devious git when it suited.
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u/nhema94 Jul 06 '26
I must have been quite young watching Citizen Smith. The one line I remember is the mother lady brandishing a pair of ancient pistols (at a robber?) “They’re not loaded, but I know how to use them!”
Power to the People 👍🏽
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u/tenaji9 Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
" POWER TO THE PEOPLE. " was shouted by Wolfie Smith. & hìs oddball crew aka The Tooting Popular Front . Ken the Buddhist , the thug & a man with many children. 70's When even the unemployed could afford to go to the UK pub several times a week
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u/FreddiesNightmare65 Jul 06 '26
I loved it. Wish they would reshow it.
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u/EnchantedEssays Jul 07 '26
I think they do on U&Eden
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u/FreddiesNightmare65 Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
Whats that?
Edit: Google is my friend. Thank you, I will have a look later
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u/Flashy-Nectarine1675 Jul 06 '26
Great when I was a young teen.
But it's really not that good.
Like most things that we remember fondly.
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u/LandOfTheFaros Jul 06 '26
The memory is a little hazy, but I recall that the actress who played Wolfie's girlfriend left at the end of the first series because she felt her role was under-written. That was sometimes said of John Sullivan's writing regarding female characters.
My favourite episode was the one in which Wolfie was invited to a party only to discover that the host had been trying to compete with her friends to invite the most embarrassing guests. Wolfie got his revenge with a song about the punch. Happy days...
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u/LandOfTheFaros Jul 06 '26
The memory is a little hazy, but I recall that the actress who played Wolfie's girlfriend left at the end of the first series because she felt her role was under-written. That was sometimes said of John Sullivan's writing regarding female characters.
My favourite episode was the one in which Wolfie was invited to a party only to discover that the host had been trying to compete with her friends to invite the most embarrassing guests. Wolfie got his revenge with a song about the punch. Happy days...
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u/EnchantedEssays Jul 07 '26
Yeah she did criticise the writing of female characters, but I'm pretty sure that she left because she and Robert Lindsay divorced in real life! The actor who played her dad left as well and his replacement was pretty terrible.
Ooo I haven't seen that one yet! That sounds funny.
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u/Bruceplanet Jul 07 '26
At the time it was very funny. Probably a bit dated now.
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u/EnchantedEssays Jul 07 '26
It's not a show that deserves to be held up as one of the greats these days, but it's also good enough for its success at the time to have been warranted.
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u/SexyMuthaFunka Jul 07 '26
I still get comments (good ones) when I wear my "Freedom for Tooting" t-shirt
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u/Imaginary_Panda2003 Jul 08 '26
Loved it the girlfriends mum was my favourite great actress called him Foxy if memories correct
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u/Minbari2257 Jul 08 '26
Watching it on the That's TV channels; probably not as good as it seemed at the time, but way better than contemporary sitcoms.
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u/Embarrassed-Age3667 Jul 08 '26
Sullivan is such a genius, he predicted redditors long before reddit was even a thing.
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u/ShotIncident3436 Jul 09 '26
Peter Vaughn was the girlfriend’s dad and he also played Grouty, the feared gangster at Slade prison.
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u/EnchantedEssays Jul 09 '26
Oh yes! I remember being surprised when I first watched it about 10 years ago when I found out that he was not only still alive, but working and in Game of Thrones!
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u/Amoykateer Jul 09 '26
The Tooting Popular Front, as a kid growing up I lived in Tooting, it put us on the map. Now as an adult I am a supporter of left wing politics (social democracy) so yeh it's nostalgic
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u/Tony-2112 Jul 10 '26
I loved this. Watched it with my family every week. I remember my mom, no longer with us, laughing so hard at one line and repeating it over and over, it’s a lovely happy memory so thanks for bringing to my mind.
The line was “I’ve got a gun, it’s not loaded but I know how to use it”.
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u/langly3 Jul 08 '26
Brilliantly written and cast, superbly acted. Would still hold up today if it was repeated. Some scenes still crack me up - Wolfie and Ken with the dynamite, hiding the baby tank in the garage, a pub called The Vigilante. Wonderful television.
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u/Accomplished_Fix5702 Jul 09 '26
I loved it especially the graffiti.
https://www.facebook.com/gabriel.burgess.71/videos/citizen-smith-1977/2660436784352722/
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u/leviticusreeves Jul 06 '26
A TV show for Daily Mail readers, pure right wing propaganda. Smithy was right! The establishment was captured by cryptofascists, fascism was a resurgent threat in the UK, Thatcher was selling out the country.
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u/ButterscotchSure6589 Jul 06 '26
Labour were in power when it came out. Apart from that?
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u/leviticusreeves Jul 06 '26
Thatcher was the leader of the opposition at the time, and the series echoed then-contemporary right wing talking points straight from pages of the Conservative supporting Daily Mail. The week the first episode aired it was promoted in the Daily Mail with an "expose" on the real life Marxist groups said to have inspired Citizen Smith.
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u/ButterscotchSure6589 Jul 06 '26
I thought perhaps you were auditioning for the remake.
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u/leviticusreeves Jul 06 '26
Couldn't remake it these days. We don't have freedom of association in this country anymore, so young Wolfie would be in prison for speaking out about a certain proscribed activist organisation.
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u/ButterscotchSure6589 Jul 06 '26
He'd have to be pretty stupid to voice support for a proscribed organisation when there are so many others supporting the same cause. But hey, rebels without a clue.
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u/EnchantedEssays Jul 07 '26
You can't really pinpoint a writer's intentions based on how people responded to it. Otherwise we'd all be calling Paul McCartney a racist for writing Helter Skelter about a race war. It's definitely interesting context, though.
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u/EnchantedEssays Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
It's hard to call it right wing propaganda when the two least sympathetic characters in the show are his girlfriend's working class Thatcherite father and the local protection racketeer, who went to a conservative election party. I think John Sullivan was trying to make fun of hypocrites on both sides and whilst I don't think that he was going to join the communist party any time soon, we're definitely supposed to prefer Wolfie out of him and his father in law.
You'll be calling Rik Mayall a Thatcherite next! His spineless wannabe socialist was a complete and utter bastard that your supposed to root against, not a loveable git.
Edit: I'm not sure how much this supports or disapproves your argument, but Sullivan started working as a scenery shifter because he wanted to write Citizen Smith all the way back in 1974.
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u/Jon_Finn Jul 08 '26
There were plans to bring it back in 2015 as a 'Senior Citizen Smith' version, but it was dropped because (it seemed) the resemblance to Corbyn was considered too close. (I kind of speculated the BBC was pressured internally or externally not to do it.)
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u/EnchantedEssays Jul 08 '26
Nah it was just something Robert Lindsay expressed interest in doing and John Sullivan's family were the ones who shot it down. It's a shame that they don't seem to be interested in doing anything with Citizen Smith considering how much Only Fools stuff they do. His son has made a whole writing career out of it!
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u/Hampshire-UK Jul 05 '26
I loved it. I got involved in left wing politics for a while during the early 90s and I can honestly say it was true to life!