Man About the House in release order

About this order

This is a listings problem. Radio Times carried no ITV listings before 1991, so the BBC's programme index has nothing at all for these three shows, and the episode guides that do exist are wrong in places. Every date on this page is a London/Thames transmission, settled against the Thames billing for the night.

What's on this list

The 39 episodes of Man About the House, both spin-offs - George and Mildred and Robin's Nest - the two Robin's Nest Christmas specials, and both films. 127 entries between August 1973 and March 1981.

Why every date says Thames

In the 1970s each ITV region scheduled its own line-up, so a programme could go out on a Wednesday in London and a Tuesday somewhere else, sometimes weeks apart. There is no single national date to be had. This page follows London, and no other region has been reconciled against it - which is worth knowing if you remember these going out and remember them differently.

The dates come from TVRDb's transcription of the Thames billing for each night. It is the only source that shows what actually went out rather than what an episode guide says went out, and the difference is not academic: Wikipedia's George and Mildred list is a week early for the whole of series 3. It starts the series on 31 August 1978, and the Thames listings for that night carry no George and Mildred at all, while 7 September does.

Two things this page cannot yet answer

Six Thursdays in late 1978 are unresolved: it is not certain which were George and Mildred first runs and which were repeats. And there is a ninth series 5 transmission on 20 November 1979 that every episode guide skips over. Both are left standing here rather than quietly smoothed away.

The American remakes are not here

Three's Company, The Ropers and Three's a Crowd were made by a different company with a different cast for ABC between 1977 and 1985. They share no episode with the Thames originals. The same goes for the Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Ecuadorian and Chilean versions.

Nor is the Christmas Day 1973 All Star Comedy Carnival, which opened with about five minutes of new Man About the House material. It is a segment inside somebody else's programme.

The series that does not exist

George and Mildred series 6 was written - eight episodes, due to record in late 1980. Yootha Joyce died on 24 August that year, and her funeral fell on the day the cast were to have started rehearsals. No footage was shot.