Steptoe and Son

- Season 1

(1962)

Harold Steptoe is thirty-seven and, since leaving the army, has been a drudge for his widowed, selfish father Albert, totting for goods to sell in their rag-and-bone business. One day Harold gets the offer of a better job and is determined to take it. Albert, however, fearing loneliness if Harold goes, knows just how to keep his son at home.

Harold has met a woman called Roxanne, who is coming round to the Steptoes' house for a meal. Albert is not happy. Suppose she and Harold get together and leave him. Roxanne is an hour late in turning up, by which time the dinner has spoiled and Harold tells her to push off. What a pity he didn't realize that Albert put the hands on the clock forward and she really was on time.

Harold has the offer of a piano, which its owner is selling cheap. Unfortunately it's in a top floor flat and Harold has to get Albert to help move it downstairs. Albert is incompetent and Harold rails at him, which doesn't please the piano owner, who feels Harold should respect his father. When a policeman comes to tell Harold his horse and cart are illegally parked, he goes off the idea of the piano and leaves it stuck in the doorway.

Harold buys a huge job lot of sets of dentures for forty pounds but has no luck in selling them, even when he advertises them all in the local paper at the price he paid for them. As a final measure he uses his last ten pounds to buy a load of gas masks, offering a set of dentures free with each one sold.

Tired of being a rag-and-bone man, Harold decides he wants to do something different and enrolls upon a course which will give him a qualification as a television repairs man. Unfortunately Albert seems to know more about the subject than he does and ultimately ruins it for him.

Albert wants to go to Bognor Regis on holiday - the same resort they have always been to but Harold fancies something more exotic, a holiday abroad, skiing perhaps. Albert can see no virtue in going abroad and soon afterwards has yet another of his turns. The doctor comes out and suggests Harold takes him away for complete rest - to Bognor Regis.