Hyancinth comes from the lower middle to lower class, but has grown into being a middle class suburban housewife. Hyancinth almost like Anthony Hopkins' portrayal of the butler in Remains Of The Day. She is entirely possessed from dawn to dusk by a fantastic need to impress people that she is worthy of being of the highest caste in England. The problem is that she is about forty to fifty years too late. Even the wealthy she wants to impress have adopted the American appearance of classes not being something to be too openly snobbish about. No one is impressed by her hysterical attempts to show off. She is tragic, because she really has a good heart but drives everyone nuts with her obsession to impress upon people that she is of the highest caste. Her neighbors are a brother and sister. The brother is a struggling composer and the sister is a very nice and apologetic woman whose greatest terror is breaking Hyacinth's precious China. Hyancinth does not even let her neighbor through the front door, because she is afraid the right people will get the wrong impressions and she is terrified of anyone tracking mud or touching her walls. Hyacinth's son we never meet, but she is incessantly bragging about him to others and oblivious to her son's sexual orientation. Her relatives include an idle man named Onslow who drinks beer all day and never changes his shirt, a World War One veteran father who is senile pervert, a plump sister with a husband who shows no interest, and another sister who spends all her time flirting with and chasing men. Her husband is completely controlled by her and can never escape her constant schemes to impress the right people. The only people who are not trying to avoid her are her lower class relatives who always show up and spoil her schemes. I guess there is a little Hyacinth in all of us. Everyone is trying to impress, but most of us have the tact to not drive everyone nuts by it.

It's a comedy. So you must laugh and you will laugh and with Mrs. Hyacinth Bucket, pronounced bouquet, you shall laugh. That's a request, a demand, an order in one word. So they took very clear characters both socially and mentally, and they knit them together into a real bouquet of flowers, Hyacinth, Violet, Daisy and Rose. The first one is married to Richard, a top local government official who is submissive and flexible and has transformed their home's bathroom into his reading room. She is the tyrant who does not give a suggestion that is not an order, who does not order you around but command the rising of the sun and the shining of the moon.Violet could have been the same, and she too married at the top of the middle class, with a Mercedes, a swimming pool and room for a pony or two, but her husband, Bruce, is no Richard. So it is a constant chase after divorce in the very sickening way of never getting it to be running after it all the time and forever. Daisy is a social marginal woman who married sentimentally a man, Onslow, who is a social marginal case living on society, not because he is handicapped or uneducated or even uneducatable, but because he is just one of these slobs who just want to live their life slouching in front of a TV only wasting some energy to go bet on horses, and nowadays they don't even need to go out because they can bet on-line since the Internet is a basic need for everyone, isn't it? The last one, Rose, is a pathetic woman who only lives in order to fall in love, that is to say to yield to her desires and appeals just in order to break every love affair, if possible with married men, to see it dying in order to chase after another prey, to hunt another game, to fall in love to her own desires and appeals one more time in order then to see it dying. There is no possible empathy for such a woman since her own desire is to constantly run around and around this cycle in the shape of a vicious circle with super short skirts and open neck shirts, or other light chest and breast embracing skimpy pieces of clothing.You have to add the son of these poor mismatched and yet perfect couple Richard and Hyacinth, a certain, oh by the way what is his name since we did not see him once, isn't it Sheridan, who is in college forever and has just dropped mathematics for a sewing needlepoint class and who does not run after girls because he is too young, so says his mother. And that mother does not seem to wonder why he only has boy friends, I mean friends who are boys or men, which is, according to his mother, good, you know why, because it keeps him safe away from girls for whom he is definitely too young, will be too young till he is too old for anything at all. But then it is a British, what's more BBC, comedy. So there must be two neighbors, a woman whose husband is living thousands of miles away and her brother who just got divorced. And of course there must be a vicar, Anglican if possible, and his wife and you have it all. We will have no plumber, but a postman and a milkman, a few cops and the father of this bouquet of flowers who is losing his head completely and believes he is still fighting against the Germans. Such comedies are so perfect that you cannot hesitate to laugh and laugh, again, encore and again still, episode after episode. But in the end you will wonder if there is any abstract value, any higher dimension. You may think your life partner is like one of these characters, or you might think you are like one of these characters, and then you might wonder if that is cathartic or not, if that may liberate you or not. Don't wonder. You will waste your time. It is nothing but a comedy.A cruel comedy though since episode after episode Mrs. Bucket, pronounced bouquet, is falling down into ever deeper failures, ever nastier tricks devised by life. You can be sure she could not cross the street but be run over by a bus, or go to the seaside but get drowned in a pool of dirty water on the embankment, the promenade des Anglais along the gravelly beach in Nice. She luckily does not go to foreign countries, at least practically never beyond Jersey and the Queen Elizabeth 2, otherwise she might really end up badly, like eaten up by the continental cannibals after slow cooking in a cast iron pot simmering on an open camp fire, soaking in a mixture of mayonnaise and mustard, and probably on Les Champs Elysées in Paris under the Arch of Triumph or on Unter den Linden in Berlin under the Brandenburg Gate.But well the series does not stop really, only symbolically since at the end of the last Christmas Special she will meet with her demise and Richard will get the order that if she dies he has to make sure Onslow puts a tie on for her funeral. Good bye lady and do not lie in the flower beds for too long. It is more comfortable under the flowers.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

This series is perhaps the funniest I have ever seen. Patricia Routledge (Hyacinth Bucket) is brilliant (to use a British phrase.) She is not only that-but darn hilarious. The supporting cast matches her along way. Geoffry Hughes is great as Onslow, who plays Hyacinth's slob brother-in-law who can care less about every and anything. And then there is Daisy, his desperate wife and Hyacinth's sister, who is desperate to get Onslow to show some interest in her. And then there is the man crazy sister Rose (Mary Millar) who will do anything to get a man and to swear off them of them as well (including donating her undies to Charity.) And, of course, there's Hyacinth's poor suffering husband Richard and her neighbor, Elizabeth, who is so nervous in Hyacinth's presence that she continually breaks Hyacinth's Periwinkle China every time she is asked (forced to)come to tea. This is a hilarious series, every episode is enjoyable.

Now I like sit-coms, from Britain I love Open All Hours, Last of the Summer Wine, Only Fools and Horses and of course this. Keeping Up is just delightful to watch, it is charming and very funny. Complete with engaging characters and great writing.I like how Keeping Up Appearances is filmed, the scenery is beautiful, the costumes are luscious and the photography is very nice. Also lovely is the music, the main theme is just great especially. The story-lines are always well-written with the characters getting into situations with uproarious results and the writing is consistently hilarious as are the visual jokes. And the acting is wonderful, Patricia Routledge is perfect as Hyacinth, Geoffrey Hughes is a sheer delight as Onslow and Clive Swift is wonderful as Richard, Hyacinth's slobbish husband.Overall, a real jewel of a British comedy. 10/10 Bethany Cox