Producer Ned Sherrin said the film "was memorable for a close-up chance to observe the detail which Warren Mitchell and Dandy Nichols put into their characterisations, for a gallery of cameos, and for two curious guest appearances by the football stars Bobby Moore and George Best."[4]
Plot
With the Garnetts' Wapping home demolished, Alf and his family are installed in a high-rise council flat. Alf struggles with "living in the sky", using lifts (which frequently break down due to power cuts "caused by the striking miners") and walking long distances to the local pub. Alf also swallows LSD thinking it's a sugar cube and walks across his neighbours balcony handrail [5]
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Sadly, The Alf Garnet Saga, which follows directly on from Till Death Us Do Part [1968], is an equally unsuccessful attempt to translate to the cinema what is on the small screen a marvellous, larger-than-life comic creation. Inevitably, other characters ... tend to pale beside that of Alf, as he bulldozes his way through a series of static set-pieces, giving vent to his opinions about the council, strikes, the IRA, 'coons', and so on. Varied locations, however, don't prevent the film from seeming one long repetitive and unfunny diatribe, occasionally broken up by some irrelevant scenes apparently tacked on as an afterthought. ... Johnny Speight's script only occasionally rises above the crudity of its protagonist, as when Alf, with the twisted logic of the true bigot, admits that smoking is dangerous but justifies it by saying he's smoking for Queen and Country, since the tobacco tax supports the National Health Service."[6]
Leslie Halliwell said: "Second inflation of the TV series Till Death Us Do Part, even cruder and less funny than the first; listlessly written and developed."[7]
References
^"The Alf Garnett Saga". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 13 April 2024.
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