Top Of The Bucket List – Farewell Patricia Routledge

On Friday we sadly lost Patricia Routledge at the age of 96. She loved her acting career and charity work, focusing on it throughout her life, not even getting married or having children. She was happy as she was, and exceptionally good at what she did in her many roles on stage and screen, including the title character in Hetty Wainthropp Investigates and her recitals of monologues by Alan Bennett.

But she will forever be remembered most fondly for playing the snobbish, candlelight supper-serving, ‘Lady of the House’ Hyacinth Bucket – pronounced ‘bouquet’ – in the wonderful sitcom Keeping Up Appearances during the 90s, written by Roy Clarke. Patricia was perfectly cast and in 1996, the year after it ended, she was voted the UK’s most popular actress at an awards ceremony for the BBC’s 60th anniversary. By that point she had already been honoured with an OBE 3 years earlier, she was granted a CBE in 2004, and ultimately became a Dame in the 2017 New Year Honours list, for her services to theatre and charity work.

For Hyacinth Bucket, everything had to be just so, and of an impeccable standard, and she wanted everyone to know just how perfect and upper-class she believed herself to be. Her plans to impress others and mingle with the higher ranks of society often went wrong of course, but she tried to retain even the slightest modicum of dignity where possible.

Her husband Richard (Clive Swift), was constantly at her beck and call whether he liked it or not – and with his job affording him the only opportunity to get a break from her, the prospect of early retirement terrified him, whereas Hyacinth was thrilled to have him home all the time. He did stand up to her on one notable occasion, but otherwise resistance proved futile and he always did as he was told. Still, he did love her despite all of that, although he had some explaining to do after forgetting their wedding anniversary once!

The two of them also had a son, Sheridan, who we never saw, but he often rang his mother to ask for money, much to Richard’s frustration. Richard was the only one to realise that Sheridan was gay though, whereas Hyacinth never seemed to twig from the obvious clues. Either that or she deliberately came up with other reasons to justify her son’s behaviour so as not to talk about it.

Hyacinth’s overbearing manner instilled terror in other people as well. Next door neighbour Elizabeth (Josephine Tewson) regularly spilled coffee when invited over because of her nerves. And Liz’s brother Emmet (David Griffin), who was staying with her after his messy divorce, was tormented by Hyacinth singing at him because she knew he was a musician, and she mistook his avoidance tactics for infatuation. Even the postman (Leo Dolan & David Janson), milkman (Robert Rawles) and paperboy would attempt to make their deliveries as quickly and surreptitiously as possible. And the vicar (Jeremy Gittins) dreaded Hyacinth’s visits to the church hall.

A key reason for Hyacinth wanting to climb the social ladder was to distance herself from the rest of her family who, as much as she loved them, were often an embarrassment to her. Her working-class sister Daisy (Judy Cornwell) was married to lazy slob Onslow (Geoffrey Hughes), and they lived in a run-down house with an old banger of a car that literally lived up to that description by backfiring on many occasions. Living with them was another of Hyacinth’s sisters, the promiscuous Rose (Shirley Stelfox initially, then the much better Mary Millar from Series 2 onwards), along with Hyacinth’s senile father (George Webb), who would get up to all sorts of mischief. Hyacinth would often be horrified when anyone from that side of the family turned up at her house or an event unexpectedly, and would desperately try to get rid of them before anyone else spotted them. Richard and Onslow were good mates though.

Fortunately for Hyacinth, she had another sister called Violet (Anna Dawson) who was much better off. Her fancy residence had a swimming pool, sauna and room for a pony, as Hyacinth would proudly announce to any guests if Violet rang her at home. But even Violet wasn’t without her issues, due to the strange and eccentric behaviour of her husband Bruce, and you could see Hyacinth’s caring side come out when Violet was in distress.

So there was a great mix of characters, and the stories were always a lot of fun, with Hyacinth organising occasions and events, or interfering with other people’s arrangements, or trying to stop Daddy from causing chaos, or just doing whatever she could to attract the attention of those in the upper echelons of society.

The best episode, though, was undoubtedly the hour-long Christmas special from 1993, which saw Hyacinth and Richard taking a cruise on the QE2, as what should have been a special experience for Hyacinth to brag about was ruined by the unexpected sight of Onslow and Daisy, who were receiving far more VIP treatment on board than her! The storyline has been put together really well, it’s consistently funny with good pacing, we get to see a lot of the gorgeous QE2 as Hyacinth and Richard explore the ship, it has a guest cameo by Lord Lichfield, and the ending is brilliant, as Onslow gets a hilarious final line when Hyacinth’s dancing with him.

The DVDs released in the UK have been very basic, containing just the episodes and no extras. And that’s frustrating considering a collector’s edition has been released overseas in the past containing a wealth of bonus material, including a very funny collection of outtakes, a lovely interview with Patricia Routledge and Clive Swift on Pebble Mill, an enjoyable advert featuring Hyacinth and Elizabeth, the excellent Comedy Connections documentary (I miss that show) and more. Thankfully almost all of it’s available online if you dig around, but it’s still a bit annoying that the BBC haven’t had the sense to milk the show for all it’s worth in its home country by selling a proper DVD set.

Mind you, even that international box set appears to be missing the mini specials where Hyacinth meets Mr Blobby (from Noel’s House Party) – many Americans and others won’t have a clue what’s going on there! – and dreams that Daddy has died (from Children In Need).

One can hope perhaps that now we’ve lost Patricia Routledge, the BBC might find it in their hearts to put together a special new box set bringing together everything from the previous collector’s edition, plus those mini specials, and any other extras they can dig out. There must be a lot of good stuff in the archives, and they could also add the 15-minute chats with Patricia Routledge and writer Roy Clarke that are on BBC iPlayer, where they reminisce about making the show.

[8 October Update: All 5 series of the sitcom have been made available on BBC iPlayer as well, having been absent from the service until now.]

The first channel to broadcast a tribute to the show following Patricia’s death was Channel 5, who repeated their 2023 celebration of the sitcom. It does have nice interviews with Patricia and some of the other cast and crew members, but typically for Channel 5 the 90-minute show is heavily padded out with celebrities explaining the sitcom and its characters, and telling us why they think it’s so great, as well as clips from the show. So the actual amount of content from people directly involved with the series is somewhat limited. The Comedy Connections documentary is far better.

In honour of Patricia and Mrs Bucket, therefore, I’ve created a Youtube playlist for the show with highlights, interviews and other extras, so you can look through that if you wish. It’s been interesting to dig a bit deeper into Patricia’s career while compiling that. I haven’t included clips from everything she’s ever been in, obviously, but I have added the Kitty sketches from the Victoria Wood show that partly inspired Hyacinth.

And I’ve also included some video clips and audio tracks of Patricia singing, because it’s her talent for singing so beautifully that enabled her to sing deliberately badly as Hyacinth – it takes genuine skill to do that well, in a way that makes it funny. So I figure she deserves to be heard with her proper voice. In interviews she spoke with great decorum and politeness as well. She was always a consummate professional.

So farewell Patricia Routledge, and other stars of the series who have passed away, including Clive Swift (who died in 2019) and Geoffrey Hughes (whose death at just 68 in 2012 was caused by prostate cancer), among others. The Bucket-filled legacy they’ve left behind is full of fun that audiences will cherish for a long time to come.