Keeping Up Appearances: Deck the Halls with Hyacinth

When it comes to snobbery, Hyacinth Bucket is in a class of her own!

Tireless social climber Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced 'Bouquet,' of course!) puts her best foot forward in this high-class comedy's favorite specials. Hyacinth busies herself performing selfless acts of charity for the lower classes (including her sisters), doling out invaluable advice to her husband Richard, and acting the adoring eldest daughter to her incapacitated Daddy, yet still finds the time to keep her neighbors on edge by hosting insufferable morning coffees and candlelight suppers. Hyacinth goes to incredible lengths in her quest for perfection and admittance to the upper-echelon of society. Hers is a carefully polished home, even the empty milk bottles sparkle on the doorstep after their obligatory rinse in the dishwasher. Husband Richard acts as chauffeur in their immaculately kept car and even their permanently absent son has a superior name, Sheridan.

Whatever Hyacinth does, her common family can always be guaranteed to show her up. Can she ever live down the disgrace? And more importantly... What will the neighbors think?!?

1991 Christmas Special
A Very Merry Hyacinth - Hyacinth roars into the Christmas season. She manages to get poor Richard into a Father Christmas outfit but then has to confront a very drunken "Daddy" who is making passes at the parish ladies in the church rectory. To make matters worse, there is a case of mistaken identity that culminates with Hyacinth kissing a most unexpected partner under the mistletoe.

1993 Christmas Special
Sea Fever - Hyacinth buys tickets for a holiday cruise on the QE2, looking forward to rubbing elbows with the better class of person that one meets in such circumstances. Little does she know that Onslow has won tickets for that very same trip.

1994 Christmas Special
Angel Gabriel Blue - Hyacinth has been very busy planning a new kitchen (a process which includes asking the Vicar whether a worktop color described as "Angel Gabriel Blue" is accurate). She becomes busier still when Daisy tells her that someone has been found in "Daddy's" bed ? and it isn't "Daddy"!

1995 Christmas Special
Historical Pageant - Hyacinth decides to organize and direct a local pageant titled "Our Town in the Civil War." She also, naturally, casts herself in the starring role of Queen Henrietta Maria and coerces various members of her family to play assorted Cavaliers and Roundheads. The Church Hall is soon in pandemonium.

Hyacinth Bucket	---	Patricia Routledge
Richard Bucket	---	Clive Swift
Elizabeth	---	Josephine Tewson
Onslow	---	Geoffrey Hughes
Daisy	---	Judy Cornwell
Rose (Series 1)	---	Shirley Stelfox
Rose (Series 2-5)	---	Mary Millar

Written by Roy Clarke
Directed by Harold Snoad
Produced by Harold Snoad
Film Editing by Andy Quested
Costume Design by Rita Reekie, Laura Ergis

British Comedy Awards®
1991-Top Television Comedy Actress- Patricia Routledge

“A tour de force of slapstick humor and weirdness ... Ms Routledge squeezes every bit of humor out of this juicy role. Her voice is an imperious Thatcherlike bark, her face is a rubbery wonder and she is a panic scrambling up a neighbor’s hedges or falling off a pier, all in a fruitless attempt to keep up appearances. But Ms Routledge is more than a gifted clown; she is a superb monologuist as well. Part of each episode consists of Hyacinth fielding phone calls ... [and] part of Ms Routledge’s gift – and that of the show’s writer and creator, Roy Clarke – is to make them as real as Onslow, Richard and the rest.” -Wall Street Journal

“Patricia Routledge’s Hyacinth Bucket is a painfully funny portrait of the sort of suburban snob who dishwashes her milk bottles and Clive Swift’s henpecked husband is a neat lesson in understatement.”- Mail On Sunday

“Keeping Up Appearances gets better and better. The finest sitcoms are driven by monsters ... and Hyacinth Bucket (sorry, Bouquet) is right up there with the best.”- Sun

“...made me laugh aloud, a rare experience in TV comedy today.” Daily Express “Brilliantly funny.” -People

“Miss Routledge is in fine form in a part tailor-made for her.”- Daily Telegraph

Clive Swift chose an acting career after his father discouraged him from joining the family furniture business. He claimed Clive was such a dreamer, he would ruin the business in two weeks.