Keeping Up Appearances
British sitcom
Keeping Up Appearances is a British sitcom created and written by Roy Clarke. It originally aired on BBC1 from 1990 to 1995. The central character is an eccentric and snobbish middle-class social climber, Hyacinth Bucket (née Walton, played by Patricia Routledge), who insists that her surname is pronounced "Bouquet". The show consists of five series and 44 episodes, four of which are Christmas specials. Production ended in 1995 after Routledge decided to move on to other projects. All 44 episodes have since been released on video, DVD and streaming media.
The sitcom follows Hyacinth in her attempts to prove her social superiority, and to gain standing with those she considers upper class. Her attempts are constantly hampered by her lower class background, and extended family, whom she is desperate to hide and distance herself from. Much of the humour comes from the conflict between Hyacinth's vision of herself and the reality of her underclass background. In each episode, she lands in a farcical situation as she battles to protect her social credibility.
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This entry incorporates text from “Keeping Up Appearances” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.