Who Did It Better: Original or Remake? Till Death Us Do Part' Or 'All in the Family'?

[Brian Damage]

[LittleRickyII]

I find these shows hard to compare. Although All in the Family was based on Till Death Us Do Part, Normal Lear made it into something very different. For one thing, Else, Edith Bunker's counterpart, is nothing like Edith Bunker. She's not a doting wife like Edith, but rather more like Alice Kramden. Or better yet, Ethel Mertz: bored with marriage and quick with the put-downs, never afraid to speak her mind to her husband. And she's no dingbat.

Archie's counterpart, Alf, is very similar to Archie. He's every bit as bigoted. But he's a bit more crusty and cantankerous than Archie (if that's possible), and doesn't really have anyone in the house supporting him the way Edith was there for Archie. His yelling is a lot louder than Archie's.

As for the son-in-law, while he doesn't get along with Alf, I don't find his relationship with Alf as explosive as Mike and Archie's. While Mike and Gloria (especially Mike) would often get into heated arguments with Archie, their British counterparts seemed more inclined to laugh at and make fun of Alf for his narrow-mindedness.

Another difference is the subject matter of the two shows. As hinted by the picture below of Alf, Till Death Us Do Part was a bit more risque than All in the Family. One early episode I saw of Till Death Us Do Part was all about Alf having diarrhea and going around the neighborhood to find someone who will let him use their toilet because his toilet at home is clogged. The closest All in the Family ever got to anything of that nature was the sound of the toilet flushing.

As for personal preferences, I will have to cast my vote for All in the Family. But that may be mainly because I identify better with the characters and culture of All in the Family, and miss a lot of the humor of Till Death Do Us Part because of the accents. It's worth noting, though, that while All in the Family and Archie Bunker's Place had an impressively long run of 13 seasons, Till Death Do Us Part ran in various incarnations over a span of 27 years! The pilot first aired in 1965 on a TV show called Comedy Playhouse. Then it ran off and on from 1966-1975, returned briefly in 1981 under the shortened title, Till Death . . ., and then had another long run, from 1985-1992 in a final version called In Sickness and in Health. Ironically, In Sickness and in Health somewhat paralleled Archie Bunker's Place in that the characters of Alf's daughter and son-in-law no longer appeared, and then in the second year, 1986, Alf's wife, Else died -- Dandy Nichols, the actress who played Else, actually did die -- and for the remaining seasons Alf was a widower.

In spite of the long 27-year span, because of the much shorter seasons (or series, as the Brits call them) far fewer episodes were produced compared to All in the Family/Archie Bunker's Place: only 107 episodes total between those three shows, compared to 298 for the 13 seasons of AITF/ABP. That's another reason it can be difficult making comparisons.