Curry and Chips only lasted six episodes before it was pulled.
Johnny Speight who wrote the script said a lot of people misinterpreted the point about racism he was trying to make.
ControversyEdit
The ambition of
Curry and Chips was purportedly to highlight
discrimination, rather than promote it. The
Independent Television Authority disagreed, and
Curry and Chips was cancelled by them after only six episodes. Speight himself later remarked, "It was the English who were made to look bigoted in the show but the people at the ITA couldn't understand that. It was London Weekend Television's first year, but only six shows went out. The ITA made LWT take it off, saying it was racist."
[4] They were not alone, as amongst those who originally complained about the show were the Race Relations Board.
[5]
Screenonline says of the show, "though it again attempted to raise important questions, [it] lacked a strong enough voice to challenge the racist attitudes of its characters, and too much of its humour relied on the use of crude racial abuse and Milligan's caricatured performance as the charmlessly-nicknamed '
**** Paddy'. The shocked reaction from some viewers and cultural commentators led to the show being dropped by ITV after just six episodes, and in retrospect it is hard to understand how Speight and LWT can have failed to anticipate the offence it caused."
[6]