An Internet sisterhood cheers as Judi Dench arrives again Originally published in Current, April 17, 2000 By Steve Behrens They came from deep in the Internet: 57 Americans who love one particular BBC sitcom and/or its stars so much that they flew to London in February for tapings of the new season. The group — mostly women, a few with husbands, sons or mothers in tow — had found Judi Dench and As Time Goes By on public TV, and then they found each other on the web. Talk about convergence. Though the raucous Keeping Up Appearances often gets bigger audiences, and the maniac Fawlty Towers compels louder laughs, the romantic comedy As Time Goes By is building a supremely loyal fanhood, especially since Dench landed roles as two major British queens in hit movies. In 1997, she starred as Victoria in Mrs. Brown and the next year she won the supporting-actress Oscar as Elizabeth in Shakespeare in Love. "When Mrs. Brown came out, Judi just took off in America," says Diane McElhany, a Seattle-area environmental chemist, who organized the London trip. "I personally had insomnia a couple years ago and was watching TV quite late. I recognized her from Mrs. Brown." KCTS was airing all seven seasons, one episode a night. She watched one, then a second, and started taping in earnest. Soon she was the latest subscriber to an Internet mailing list devoted wholeheartedly to ATGB. The women who started two active ATGB lists on the Internet also saw Dench as Queen Victoria and were soon feeding their habits with ATGB. More than 300 fans have joined the list started in April 1998 by Emile St. Claire, an animation-studio administrator in Los Angeles. Many participants in her list seem to be new to the Internet, she says. They apparently went straight to Judi Dench. Bonnie Rottstin, a retired government worker in suburban Chicago, learned she was not alone in her admiration for Dench by joining St. Claire's list. She soon spun off her own list and an extensive web site with 200 visitors a day and more than 4,000 files. Included are her rundowns of each of the 50-some episodes, plus countless tidbits about the program and the cast that were e-mailed to her by other fans. (Pop quiz: "Which man was not one of Sandy's dates?: Kong, Trevor, Dennis, Harry, Alvin. Nick.") Rottstin didn't go to London herself (she hates flying), but her site offers a thorough account of the trip by people who did. The Internet sisterhood did not immediately fly to London. First, a contingent gathered on Broadway to see Dench's Tony-winning performance in Amy's View last May. "That's how most of us got bonded," says Bonnie Rottstin, "It was as though we had known each other forever, absolutely forever." When the women got together, they talked about many things, Rottstin says, but not the show and the actors. They already had gotten over chatting online about how good Dench's co-star, Geoffrey Palmer, looks in a bathrobe. Nine months later, nearly 60 were on the London Underground, headed for the BBC's London studio center in Shepherd's Bush. Don Taffner's DLT Entertainment, which produces the show for the BBC, arranged for tickets. Watching from seats along a row of several sets, the visitors marvelled at Palmer's ad-libbing and Dench's ability to instantly snap into character. Afterwards the cast handed out signed photographs and answered questions. No, they didn't know whether the BBC would renew the series for a ninth season. Rosemary Fry Plakas, a Library of Congress curator from the Washington area, saw Dench twice more in Britain while she was vacationing there, once when both were coincidentally in Kent at the same time. Driving into town with her son, Plakas heard on the radio that Dench would be there to receive an award. "I was like a bloodhound on the scent," she recalls. Plakas waited for the actress and gave her a bouquet of iris when she emerged on the street. After a brief conversation with Dench, Plakas went looking for a TV set so she could see Dench receive the award. British reporters glommed onto the oddity of Americans crossing the ocean to see a sitcom they adore. One radio journalist reported that the Americans were "obsessives, basically," and said they were drawn to England by the program's dry wit. "It's classy, it's articulate, apparently. And Geoffrey Palmer is apparently extraordinarily sexy for the ladies." "They called us obsessive, which we really took offense at," says Pam Joyce, an insurance case manager from southern California. But Joyce admitted loving even the props. "I'm obsessive about the bread crock in the kitchen," says Joyce. "We found the company in England that makes them." Buyers for the Signals catalog, take note! ATGB is a romantic comedy, full of quips and raised eyebrows, like The Thin Man without the murders and martinis. It starts with a happy ending: the Dench character renews a romance that had been disrupted by war 38 years earlier. The boyfriend, now also in his 60s, is played by Geoffrey Palmer, who looks and wisecracks like Walter Matthau but manages to be regarded as a mature dreamboat. "Preciously grumpy" is one fan's description. The Dench and Palmer characters finally get married in Season 6. Longtime Britcom fans have seen the leads before. Palmer starred in Butterflies, originally produced in 1978-83. Dench co-starred with her real-life husband Michael Williams in A Fine Romance, produced for London Weekend Television in 1981-84 and last distributed in the States in 1986-88. Continental Program Marketing has just offered a new run of the series. What appeals to the fans of Britcoms and ATGB in particular? "I think it's the accent," says Susanne Ritt Nichol, director of creative services at D.L. Taffner, an affiliate of the producing company. "It's quaint. It's fun to look into somebody else's backyard." A BBC boss several years ago proclaimed the death of the homey "chintz and sofa" comedy, says the Julius Cain, v.p. of the BBC Sales Co, who sells Britcoms and other programs to public TV, "but to a large extent, that's what American viewers find so entertaining." Fans themselves almost invariably say they admire the ATGB's acting, as well as the writing of Bob Larbey, who also scripted Good Neighbors and Dench's earlier comedy A Fine Romance. Besides, the fans say, they like the program's slow pace and the ordinariness of the characters Jean and Lionel. They're prickly enough to make choice remarks, but otherwise they're non-glamorous and conceivably real. Emile St. Claire, one of the Internet list operators, said she was drawn in by the first episode she saw: the Dench and Palmer characters contemplating marriage ambivalently as they bumped into a succession of people in unhappy pairs. She doubts you'd find such a natural dramatization in an American sitcom. Though St. Claire is 29 years old and doesn't identify directly with the issues of aging that suffuse the stories, she says the program has given her a better appreciation of her own grandmother, who has dealt with similar issues. Even the fans worry that they may come to identify with the characters or the actors too closely. "In any fandom you'll find people who are too focused," says St. Claire. She recalls a flaming interchange more than a year ago over the character of a rigid but well-meaning minor character, Mrs. Flack. "It got heated. People are really passionate. They see themselves, they see people they know." ATGB and Dench herself carry extra emotional weight because both are about second chances and new starts. The program revives a youthful passion that the lovers thought they had lost. And Dench, though she has been an acting sensation since she debuted at the Old Vic four decades ago, gained new recognition in her 60s, not only as a professional but as a role model. "What is so appealing is a combination of good writing — a nice, romantic story that life isn't over after 50 — and having superb actors and actresses," says Rosemary Plakas. "I've told Judi in letters I've written to her that I work with materials to interpret and preserve the past," said the curator. "So I spend a lot of time celebrating lives of great women. I get passionate about these dead people. So I guess it's okay to get passionate about somebody who's alive."	Palmer and Dench reconnecting in an early episode of BBC's As Time Goes By.
	Cultivating the niche with a Britcom club Stations were not slow to see the Britcom audience as a niche to cultivate, as both viewers and donors. Akron's WEAO, where Britcoms hold the 11 p.m. hour every night and completely fill Saturday primetime, was first to establish its own British Comedy Club in January 1996. The club has 3,100 members, in a market where the whole station membership is 25,000. There's no membership fee, but club events netted $21,000 for the station last year, says Lisa Martinez, communications director at the station. John Inman, the outrageously fey haberdasher of Are You Being Served starred at a benefit dinner ($300 a plate) after selling out a stage presentation ($25 a seat), while he was in town for a pledge appearance. Club members flock to preview screenings, where they become a focus group to help WEAO decide its next Britcom purchases. Martinez says the station will buy Murder Most Horrid, Last of the Summer Wine and Dad's Army after good reactions from the club. "Your taste alone is not the only source of information you want to use" in picking Britcoms, she says. Martinez came up with the idea after programmer Don Freeman asked her to devise a way to brand Britcoms as a genre that fans can always find on the station. Similar clubs developed at Louisiana Public Broadcasting, Denver's KRMA and elsewhere.

 

	.	To Current's home page
	.	Outside links: Emile St. Claire's ATGB web site and Bonnie Rottstin's. Also: Philip Hill's extensive (British) TV Comedy Database, with profiles of many Britcoms.

Web page created April 20, 2000 and revised Aug. 29, 2001
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