Reception
During its run, the series attracted some mild criticism for its reliance on sexual stereotypes and double entendres, including jokes about Mrs. Slocombe's "pussy" (cat) e.g. Mrs Slocombe: "Animals are very psychic; the least sign of danger and my pussy's hair stands on end". John Inman's camp portrayal of Mr. Humphries as an effeminate man could easily be misinterpreted by viewers. Inman pointed out that Mr. Humphries' true sexual orientation was never explicitly stated in the series, and David Croft said in an interview that the character was not homosexual, but "just a mother's boy". With a broad mixture of stereotypical gay characteristics, some apparent heterosexual attractions, and always picking up on ambiguous words such as queen, gay, and camp, viewers were left wondering about Mr. Humphries' sexual orientation. In an episode of the spin-off Grace & Favour, the character is further described as neither a "woman's man" nor a "man's man" and as being "in limbo".
The characters (Mr. Humphries especially) sometimes broke the fourth wall for comical effect.
Read more about this topic: Are You Being Served?
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)