Keeping Up Appearances - Everything's Coming Up Hyacinth
Satirical British sitcomKeeping Up Appearancescenters around the  imposing person of Hyacinth Bucket (Patricia Routledge), a snobbish,  self-deluded, and tyrannical English matron who pronounces her last name  "bouquet." In the third series, Hyacinth's long-suffering husband Richard  (Clive Swift) submits unwillingly to early retirement, earning the  sympathy of their terrorized neighbors Elizabeth (Josephine Tewson) and  Emmett (David Griffin). The show ping-pongs back and forth between  Hyacinth's irrepressible social-climbing efforts (she connives to get an  invitation to the Royal Garden Party, among other things) and the  floundering lives of her lower-class sisters Rose (Mary Millar) and Daisy  (Judy Cornwell) and Daisy's slovenly husband Onslow (Geoffrey Hughes), who  wallow in laziness and sexual frustration. The show's strength comes from  the balance between Routledge--a comic powerhouse, able to blithely  steamroll over everyone else in the excellent cast--and the subtle  underplaying of Swift.--Bret Fetzer