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Wait Till Your Father Gets Home

Santa's Little Helper invokes Homer's ire - again Richie's plans for a night out come a cropper of another of Howard's doorstep vigils

WHAT THE SIMPSONS once did for the Clinton decade, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home did for Nixon-era America, as titular dad Harry Boyle, voiced by TOM “HAPPY DAYS” BOSLEY and his wife Irma continually fretted about their three kids (fat frumpy Alice, proto-slacker Chet and annoying brat Jamie) and whether they were shagging around or smoking dope. Bit of a departure for H-B then, being based on the success of All In The Family (the American version of TILL DEATH US DO PART), and their last primetime effort in the States, although more usually to be found here on a Sunday afternoon or just before the News at 5:45. Despite the presence of that singular Hanna-Barbera canned laugh, you didn’t get the jokes when you were seven, apart from the sliding-down-bannister/crockery-smashing incident in the titles, memorable also for Harry Boyle driving along the show’s title in 1970s colourful lettering in the credits, before the roof flew off the family house at the end. Doubtless watched by Matt Groening on more than a few occasions, though the wacky next-door-“neighbor” in this case was anti-Communist nutcase, Ralph.

5 Comments

5 Comments

  1. Brian Rowland

    September 22, 2009 at 1:45 pm

    Oddly, and I think this is what alerted me that it was no children’s programme, WTYFGH was shown in some ITV regions at 11.30 at night in the 70s. “But it’s a cartoon”, the puzzled six-year-old me pondered.

  2. Cindylover1969

    October 9, 2009 at 4:27 pm

    “WHAT THE SIMPSONS once did for the Clinton decade, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home did for Nixon-era America…”

    Except that “The Simpsons” had a tendency to actually be funny. (The Cartoon Network aired this in the late ’90s, and it was almost as crap – and dated – as “The Young Ones.”)

  3. B B Beyer

    October 9, 2009 at 8:46 pm

    @Cindylover1969: depends what you mean by “dated”- all shows are of their time. Personally, I think The Young Ones is still great (and so does my 9 year old!). As are Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers and Bilko, which is still the yardstick by which I measure sitcoms.

  4. Glenn A

    November 4, 2012 at 2:03 pm

    A clever cartoon that while shown in the children’s slot on ITV was actually a clever send up of the Nixon era that adults appreciated more than kids. Mind you, when you’re six, you don’t even know who the prime minister is over here, never mind the president of America.

  5. Tom Ronson

    March 31, 2022 at 3:46 am

    I think the date rape joke in the opening titles might have put the tin lid on this ever being repeated.
    ‘And what daddy doesn’t know, can’t hurt him…’

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