Till Death Us Do Part

Alf is heartbroken to learn Else isn't returning to England and has written a letter confirming it to Rita.

Min's mother has died and everybody has returned from the funeral though Min is adamant that her mother will be reincarnated as a blackbird. Having made sure that he has not already learnt of its outcome Alf settles down to watch the Ali-Foreman fight on TV but there are, of course, complications.

Min and Bert Reed from next door have a fight and split up.

Alf shows his prejudice against immigrants, one of whom moves in next door.

Gran appears to be dying, so she won't need her late husband's gold watch now, will she?

There's a power cut – isn't there?

Alf feels he doesn't need a TV licence if he only gets commercial television.

Alf, in a wheelchair with a broken leg, on overpopulation: "Let's have a war and get rid of some of your bloody youth!"

Alf speaks for the silent majority: "If we want a proper democracy here, we've got to start shooting a few people."

Alf's in the money; celebrating at the pub he meets a friend, and thinks he has a sure fire way to make some more.

When Else is laid up with bronchitis her sister Maud comes to look after the family. She and Alf hate each other and, after he insults her once too often, she refuses to cook for him. She also sees the opportunity to make him jealous when Else's old flame George Pringle comes to visit and Maud hints at something that might have happened between him and Else on Brighton beach before the war.

Despite the fact that he confiscated local kids' football, Alf is still invited by the vicar to act as coach for the youth soccer team, attracting scorn from Mike. Needless to say Alf is not a good trainer, concentrating on the skills of only one player, though he does attract the attention of some well-known soccer players.

It's New Year's Eve and Alf, not wanting to join the others at the party over the road, gets out his old Monopoly set. When the rest of the family returns they have a game, leading to the inevitable falling out over property between Alf and Mike, and Alf taking drastic action.

When Mike is unable to get into the phone box to place Alf's bet on a horse which ultimately wins, Alf decides it is time for the Garnetts to have their own phone. Despite Mike trying to wind him up by pretending to be the operator, Alf is proud of his new possession but gets fed up when Else allows Min from next door to come in and use the phone, turning down the volume on the television show he is trying to watch

A quiet afternoon in the Garnett household is the result of Mike and Alf both reading their own new books, and Else and Rita boredly sitting by, wondering what their respective husbands are reading. It transpires that Alf is reading "Cleaning up TV", the book written by the TV morality, anti-swearing, anti-blasphemy, anti-violence campaigner Mary Whitehouse. After ridicule levelled at him from both Mike and Rita ("She's concerned, for the bleedin' moral fibre of the nation!"), whose moral standards are at almost polar opposites from those of Mrs Whitehouse and Mr Garnett, Alf suffers a bout of diarrhoea, which he has been suffering from all day.

Alf is ill in bed with the rest of the family downstairs ignoring him, watching TV. Eventually an NHS doctor with a cough, with questionable competence, arrives and declares that there is nothing wrong with Alf. Alf retorts that on a previous occasion that this doctor diagnosed nothing wrong with a patient, the patient died shortly after. Alf demands to see a specialist and is admitted to hospital, but is frustrated that he has to go on a bus and an ambulance will not be called. In hospital, he frightens a fellow patient, shows surprise at how much compassion the coloured nurses show and overhears a discussion by two surgeons about the operation they are due to perform on Alf tomorrow, including how they must not drink too much brandy that night and how they will have to hurry the operation tomorrow so they can play a round of golf.

Alf returns home late, after doing overtime to find no fire, no family and no food. The family, it turns out, have been out to the cinema, Rita and Else arrive back without Mike in tow, who it is revealed is at a local fish and chip shop for the three of them, leaving out Alf. Rita surmises that if Alf were to call the chip shop from the local phone box (many households, including the Garnett household, in the late 1960s, were not connected up to the national telephone network, relying on calls made from and received in local call boxes), he might get through in time before Mike places the three orders – Mike is queuing to place the orders.

A visit by people collecting for a Vietnam War victims charity leads to a debate about war – the Vietnam, Second and First World Wars – only then resulting in Alf opening up a world map and showing his complete lack of knowledge of where Russia and even Asia is. This, naturally, is down to the Labour Government for giving away the British Empire. When questioned whether he supports the causes for all three of those wars, he claims to support the causes of the First and Second World Wars, citing his time out in the deserts of North Africa for the Second. Then a lorry parks outside, blocking the sunlight entering the Garnett living room window. An argument erupts between Alf and the lorry driver, with the lorry driver refusing to move. When he thinks no-one is looking, he lets the tyres on the lorry down, only to be overlooked by a lorry driver and a policeman. The policeman hands him a tyre pump, to which Alf reluctantly obeys. So much for the bulldog breed!

Redecorating the living room leads on to discussions of sexual mores, including suspicions that Mike and Rita had premarital sex. They convince Rita's parents that they didn't, but as soon as they leave the room, Mike and Rita begin laughing, leaving this debate open-ended. Else then reminds Alf that he attempted sex with her before they were married. A discussion with Wally the Milkman leads on to a discussion about the existence of God, to which Mike denies His existence. After Alf is left alone to complete the wallpapering, he realises that he has accidentally left the wallpaper strips too short. Later, he pays a local decorator to complete the job while the rest of the family are out. When Else comes back, she then decides she doesn't like the floral pattern she herself chose, and Alf storms out, insisting "I'm going down the pub!" before returning moments later realising he has no more money, having paid the local decorator £8 10s.

The Garnetts drive to Cornwall for a holiday in an isolated old cottage.

Mike tries to convince Alf to sell the house and buy a new larger modern house. However, Alf later learns his plans involve Mike having the title deeds.

It is Else and Alf's twenty-fifth wedding anniversary though Alf has forgotten and it is left to Mike to give him a present to pass on to his wife, not that Alf is grateful. Mike and Rita take Alf and Else to dinner at a fancy place in the West End. But Alf gets drunk and Mike discovers he doesn't have enough money for the bill.

A weekend in the Garnett household is punctuated with rows, and the protagonist is generally Alf. Whether it is politics, family, drink or football, he has an opinion that is shared by very few - least of all his long-suffering wife Else and his son-in-law Mike.