Billy Liar (1973-74)

Having, over the past few weeks, a lot of time to fill, but unable to do anything too stressful or demanding, I found myself catching up with a number of sitcoms of my youth.  Most recently, I've been reacquainting myself with what nowadays seems to be a little remembered show produced by London Weekend Television (LWT): Billy Liar.  Having already successfully adapted his 1958 novel into a stage play, film and even stage musical, using it as a premise for a sitcom must have seemed the next logical step for Keith Waterhouse.  Co-written with Willis Hall, the TV series updates the central character and action to the early seventies, but leaves the central premise intact: under achieving small town boy Billy Fisher routinely escapes his mundane existence - he lives with his conservative parents and is stuck in a dead end job (literally, he works for an undertaker) - through his fantasies.  Whenever faced with problems, he retreats into a dream world where he is always heroic and triumphant over his foes (personified by his parents, boss, on/off fiance Barbara and various other authority figures).  The main difference here is that, whereas in the book/film/play most of his fantasies centre around the imaginary country of Ambrosia, in the TV series, they are, more often than not, inspired by then current pop culture, (there's a second series episode I remember from its first broadcast in which Billy's fantasies centre around the Kung Fu TV series, for instance).

The Billy Liar TV series ran for two long series in 1973-74 (twenty six episodes in total), showing on Friday nights.  The first series was notable for containing a surprising amount of swearing for its era (mainly Billy's father uttering the word 'bloody' when describing his son, when that was the worst swear word you could hear on TV), and some mild (by today's TV standards) nudity, (mainly some bare behinds and the odd flash of 'side boob').  The second series, shown in an earlier slot, toned these elements down.  Despite being reasonably popular, Billy Liar has never been repeated on UK TV since its first transmission and only secured a DVD release a few years ago.  This seems surprising as, watching some of the episodes again, it hasn't aged as badly as some of its contemporary sitcoms.  Sure, the fashions seem shocking by today's standards, but much of the humour, particularly the fantasy sequences, still raise a smile.  The seventies pop culture references are still comprehensible (they often reference TV series and films which are still remembered and shown today).  With scripts by Waterhouse and Hall, it perhaps should not be surprising that the writing holds up well, the dialogue and gags still feeling relatively sharp.  Moreover, production values are generally above average for the era.

The most problematic element of the show for me, has been the title character himself.  I'm not entirely sure that even nowadays we'd see such a maladjusted character presented as the hero of a sitcom.  It isn't just that Billy is a fantasist, he is, as the title implies, a habitual liar, lying with ease and frequently for no reason at all.  While the lies he tells to make himself seem more interesting, or the elaborate fantasies he weaves about his family history, (at various points he claims his father is a Mafia don or a convict, his grandmother a famous artist and his mother is dead), are understandable and amusing, other of his lies seem pointless, needlessly complicating situations. (I know that the writers' intent here was undoubtedly to reinforce the idea that Billy is a pathological liar who has lost the ability to distinguish between fact and his fantasies, but all too often these minor lies seem to be plot contrivances designed solely to move the story along).  Furthermore, the lies that he tells his sometime fiance Barbara and his various other girlfriends frequently seem downright cruel.  Indeed, his treatment of women in general is abominable, stringing them along, often playing them off against each other and generally deceiving them, regardless of how much they like him or their acts of kindness toward him.  On top of all that, he's a petty thief, forever stealing from his employer for no apparent reason.

Which isn't to say that the character is badly written, poorly conceived or badly acted.  It seems clear to me that the writers deliberately make Billy an enigmatic character, true to the book and its other adaptations.  It's just that while this works well in the context of, say, the sixties film adaptation, which plays out as a comedy drama, in the context of a half hour ITV seventies sitcom, it seems slightly jarring.  While on one level Billy Liar is played as a fairly conventional sitcom - lightweight and cheery, where nobody ever really gets hurt and there never seem to be long-term consequences to people's actions - thanks to the main character, it does have an underlying dark edge.  We're never quite sure whether Billy's father is right or not when he despairingly speculates that his son needs certifying.  But, like the book and film, the sitcom relies on a degree of audience identification to make Billy a more sympathetic character.  Who of us hasn't whiled away the hours in some unfulfilling job by fantasising about a different life, a better life?  I certainly have - and still do.  Moreover, when we hear some of Billy's father's criticisms of his son - reading library books, having ambitions beyond small town life, having an imagination - (not to mention his constant threats of violence) it's even harder not to sympathise with Billy's attempts to escape the straight jacket of small town life. Outrageous lies and day dreams are the only outlet he is allowed for his inner creativity.

Jeff Rawle (nowadays probably best known for playing a serial killer on the soap Hollyoaks), gives a hugely assured performance in the title role.  His Billy is deceptively sophisticated in his fantasies and when weaving his stories to family and strangers alike, yet child like and naive when left to his own devices.  He is more than ably supported by the rest of the cast, which includes Colin Jeavons as his unctuous boss and Pamela Vezey as his mother.  May Warden gives a star turn as Billy's Grandma whose ramblings about her misremembered past, - and her Sound of Music fixation - rival her Grandson's fantasies.  Best of all is George A Cooper's apoplectic performance as Billy's dad (a role he had previously played on stage, opposite Tom Courteney), forever raging at his son's non-conformity and the damage to his social standing he imagines it is causing. Ironically, Mr Fisher is a TV repair man - the very device his livelihood relies upon is one of main engines driving Billy's fantasies.

On the basis of the half dozen, or so, episodes I've watched so far, I can't help but feel that Billy Liar deserves to be better remembered.  It's definitely somewhat more sophisticated than many of its better remembered contemporaries.  Certainly, it presents viewers with a far more challenging anti-hero than most sitcoms by presenting a young man exhibiting many of the characteristics of a psychopath as its central character. Nevertheless, the adherence to sitcom format means that the viewer has to accept a number of implausibilities - mainly the question of why, despite the fact that they know he is a congenital liar, do members of the regular cast continually fall for various of his falsehoods?  And why on earth doesn't his employer, Mr Shadrack, fire him?  But hey, this is seventies sitcom land where the reset button is pushed every half hour.