Wendy Richard was good at making a put-down sound like a practical necessity. We rate her most as part of a busy comic company, where a look could establish Miss Brahms as more than somebody else's assistant.
Fi1m perspective
A look from Wendy Richard can suggest that the conversation has already taken longer than it deserves. As Miss Brahms, the junior ladieswear assistant in Are You Being Served? (1972), she gives the department-store hierarchy someone capable of answering back. Her Cockney delivery makes a sharp reply sound like something said at work, rather than a line prepared for an audience. Her timing is worth the half-hour, even when the jokes themselves are worn.
The part was her breakthrough, and she stayed for all 69 episodes of the original series. Her Miss Brahms and Mollie Sugden's Mrs Slocombe help make the staff feel like a group of people with competing ideas about who matters most. We warmed to the pair because neither seems to believe she is merely there to help somebody else be funny.
Sugden was also one source of those expressive looks, and Richard's work beside her is a useful reminder that reacting is part of comic timing. With John Inman and Frank Thornton in the company, no single performer has to supply every laugh. That distribution of attention is the programme's strength. It is also why its limitations can be easy to forgive: affection for the staff sometimes carries scenes that the writing has not earned.
The move to EastEnders (1985) put that familiar voice to a different use as Pauline Fowler, a launderette worker and family anchor. Richard made the change from glamorous shop assistant to worn-down matriarch convincing without losing her recognisable manner of speaking and moving. The later scripts, which made Pauline increasingly miserable and less sympathetic, were a poorer use of that consistency. The character became repetitive, and Richard's reliable presence was not enough to make that rewarding.
She returned to Miss Brahms in Grace and Favour (1992), while still playing Pauline. For a first encounter, we would choose the original department-store comedy and pay attention to what Richard does while Sugden is speaking. Keep it to a half-hour at first; affection for the company need not mean accepting every joke.
Biography
Wendy Richard (born Wendy Emerton) was an English actress. She trained at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts and made early television appearances in series including Dad's Army (1968) and On the Buses (1971), as well as films such as Carry On Matron (1972) and Carry On Girls (1973).
She is best known for portraying Miss Shirley Brahms in the BBC sitcom Are You Being Served? (1972–1985) and its sequel series Grace & Favour (1992–1993), and as Pauline Fowler in the BBC soap opera EastEnders (1985–2006). Richard was appointed MBE in 2000 and received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2007 British Soap Awards. She died in 2009.
