“Keeping Up Appearances,” the very British sitcom than ran for 44 episodes on BBC-TV and became a perennial on American public television, is out in a 10-CD Collectors Edition packaged in a woven “gardener’s vest” with over three hours of bonus content.
The drollery settles around Hyacinth (Patricia Routledge), a flustered, flummoxed, flabbergasted middle-class snob whose posh aspirations are brittle veneer always in danger of cracking. A quirky delight, “Keeping Up Appearances” spoofs Britain’s obsession with class and etiquette; Hyacinth epitomizes all that is most ridiculous with England. Officious with letter carriers and anyone deemed as below her station, she passes judgment on every action. “Not in broad daylight in front of prying eyes,” she tells her amiable, compliant husband Richard, insisting that if he must perspire while gardening, he should have the good sense to do so in the backyard where the neighbors can’t see.
Hyacinth lives in horror of her déclassé sisters Rose (an aging nymphomaniac) and Daisy (apt to leave the house in bath slippers). Brother-in-law Onslow is a certified slob. Their arrival on her doorstep sends Hyacinth into spasms of panic. “It’s so thoughtless to look as poor as they do,” she declares.
The mostly half-hour episodes are replete with running gags. Hyacinth’s last name is the unpromising Bucket, which she insists on pronouncing as “Bouquet”—an old Huguenot name, don’t you know.
