Yanks Go Home

Yanks Go Home was a short-lived sitcom from the mid-1970s that took its inspiration from the old wartime jibe “over paid, over sexed and over here!” — the phrase British locals jokingly used about the American troops stationed in Britain during the build-up to D-Day. The humour behind the phrase always carried a bit of truth, especially among British men who weren’t too thrilled about GIs arriving with pockets full of nylons, cigarettes and chocolate and immediately becoming popular with the local women.

Granada Television turned that premise into a sitcom that ran for two series in 1976 and 1977, totalling just thirteen half-hour episodes. The setting was the medieval market town of Warrington in Lancashire (though it’s technically Cheshire these days), where a group of American servicemen are billeted during the early 1940s, much to the annoyance of the local male population.

One of the main storylines involves local girl Doreen Sankey, played by Catherine Neilson, who becomes rather closely involved with Private Floyd Tutt, played by Jay Benedict. At least the series eventually tidies that up — by the final episode he does the decent thing and marries her. Around them is a fairly busy cast, including Norman Bird in the first series and Peter Sallis in the second, plus Stuart Damon, who viewers would recognise from The Champions. Bruce Boa appears as Sgt Gus Pulaski, several years before he famously turned up in Fawlty Towers demanding a Waldorf salad from a thoroughly confused Basil Fawlty. Coincidentally, Norman Bird appeared in that same Fawlty Towers episode too.

Watching it now, the show is very much a product of cheap laughs 1970s television comedy that filled the gaps between genuine classics. Subtlety isn’t really part of the package — the title alone tells you exactly what you’re in for. Most of the characters are broad stereotypes rather than fully rounded people, including the obligatory hillbilly type from Kentucky complete with exaggerated accent. The fact that the thirteen episodes were written by six different writers probably didn’t help matters either; Stuart Damon even contributed a script himself. Because of that, the characterisation sometimes feels a bit inconsistent, and hardly anyone is given much depth. The canned laughter, which was pretty standard at the time, doesn’t do it any favours either.

That said, it’s an interesting little curiosity from the era. The wartime culture clash between American troops and British civilians could have been a genuinely rich idea for drama or comedy. In this case it was not. The series may, or may not, have inspired John Schlesinger's 1979 movie Yanks, featuring Richard Gere and Vanessa Redgrave, which told a similar story but without the laughs. The movie was a box-office flop and like Yanks Go Home it has faded from the memory.

Warrington appears to have been quite popular at the time as I remember a TV commercial in Vladivar Vodka’s long running comedic “Vladivar Vodka from Varrington” campaign, starring – amongst others, Stephen Greif and Bella Emberg.

In the end, Yanks Go Home is one of those shows that was reasonably popular in its day but only for a fleeting two series. It’s mildly, though inconsistently entertaining if you approach it as a piece of nostalgic 1970s television, but it’s hard to escape the feeling that the premise deserved sharper writing and more developed characters than it actually got. Still, as a snapshot of how British TV comedy approached this bit of wartime nostalgia in the 1970s, it’s an interesting little relic.