Bread was a Brit Com that ran from 1986 to 1991. It was about the working-class Boswell family of Liverpool: Apron Matron Nellie (Jean Boht), and her children Joey (Peter Howitt, then Graham Bickley), Jack (Victor McGuire), Adrian (Jonathon Morris), Aveline (Gilly Coman, then Melanie Hill), and Billy (Nick Conway). The title refers to Cockney rhyming slang for money (bread and honey = money) and was about attempting to keep the family financially afloat in Thatcher's Britain.
A BBC publicity photo of the show's cast on board the Mersey ferry was captioned Bread Cast upon the Water.
Tropes featured in Bread include:
- Absurdly High-Stakes Game: Freddie has clearly played in one of these sometime before the end of Series 1, leading to him having to do a runner.
- The Alleged Car: Billy drove an old Volkswagen Beetle which constantly backfired when driven.
- All That Glitters: A regular occurrence, given the dodgy types the Boswells do business with.
- Awful Wedded Life: Nellie and Freddie's marriage has clearly been a disaster from the outset, but divorce is not on the cards because they are Catholics.
- Badass Family: NEVER mess with one of the Boswells, unless you want the wrath of the entire family descending on you. Which you really, really don't.
- Big Brother Instinct: As the eldest, Joey has this towards the others, particularly Billy (the youngest) and Aveline (the only girl).
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: All the Boswells have this, but particularly Nellie. Despite being extremely religious, she doesn't mind her boys having sex (or "being normal" as she terms it), or committing benefit fraud.
- Breakout Character: Joey was extremely popular for the first four series, and Peter Howitt was considered the series' heartthrob and breakout star. When he decided to leave Bread to concentrate on directing and other acting opportunities, his replacement was not as popular with viewers, so the character wasn't as prominent in the later series.
- Calling the Old Man Out: Joey tries to do this to Freddie, but Freddie is so amazingly selfish, he doesn't care.
- Catchphrase:
- Nellie: "She's a tart".
- Joey: "Greetings".
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Series four ends with the clear indication that Shifty will reunite with his estranged wife, Celia Higgins. However, Celia is nowhere to be seen in series five and is never mentioned again.
- Cliffhanger: The show featured soap opera-style cliffhangers, meaning that viewers had to watch each week to see how the previous week's cliffhanger would be resolved. This also meant that each episode was not self-contained, but the plot unfolded as the series progressed. This was unusual for a comedy at the time, but has been used to great effect by comedies since.
- Comic-Book Adaptation: A comic strip based on the series featured in the BBC's Teen magazine Fast Forward, although the overall tone was altered for the magazines younger readership, and most of the featured stories were of a generic nature, not following the continuity of the television series and mostly just using the characters to tell simple joke stories .
- Creator Thumbprint: The surname "Boswell" was a favourite of Carla Lane's.
- Curse Cut Short: Joey clearly mouths "bastard" in the last episode of series one, in reference to Freddie.
- Disappeared Dad: Freddie, who ran off with another woman three years before the show started. He reapears in the middle of Series One, much to the consternation of the rest of the family.
- Do Not Call Me "Paul": Adrian's first name is Jimmy, but, thinking it too common, he switched to his middle name.
- Double Standard: Nellie is much more concerned about what Aveline gets up to because she's a girl and "it's different for girls". The boys are also very protective of her - much more than they are of Billy, who is younger than her.
- Family Business: If selling things that Fell Off the Back of a Truck could be described as a business.
- Family Honor: The Boswells have their own unique take on this. DHSS fraud is a-ok, as is selling items of dubious history, as long as it all goes towards the family upkeep.
- Food Pills: Joey tells Granddad he thinks people will be having these "soon" instead of food. Granddad scorns this as "new-fangled".
- Good Shepherd: The kindly Irish Priest Father Dooley. (It has to be said he is a bit of a Cloudcuckoolander, though.)
- Grumpy Old Man: Granddad. The family love him anyway.
- Hell-Bent for Leather: Joey and his leather jacket and trousers.
- It's All About Me: Freddie. One wonders where Joey got his sense of fatherly responsibility, because it certainly wasn't from Freddie. (Perhaps from Granddad in his younger days?)
- Multigenerational Household: Mum and five adult children, with Granddad next door. (Nellie does all of Granddad's cooking, which is presumably the only way he can stay in his own home.)
- Obliquely Obfuscated Occupation: What is Joey's night-time job?
- One-Word Vocabulary: Small-time gangster Yizzel's sole contribution is to back up his colleague with the single word "Yeah!"
- Promotion to Parent: Joey behaves as a father figure to the others, due to Freddie abandoning the family.
- Public Exposure: Aveline had some topless shots taken by an unscrupulous photographer who sold them to a men's magazine. One of her brothers buys all of the copies of the magazine at the local newsagent so their mother doesn't see them.
- Screen-to-Stage Adaptation: After the series had finished, a stage play of the show entitled Bread – The Farewell Slice toured the UK.
- Short-Distance Phone Call: Granddad (who is next door) likes to call up Nellie if he thinks she's taking too long to bring his food over, or disapproves of something about the food she's just cooked him. Even though she's a rather no-nonsense type, she is always very patient with this.
- Special Guest: Linda McCartney was friends with writer Carla Lane and had a guest appearance in series 4, episode 7 (1988). Her husband Paul appeared briefly at the end of the episode.
- Thicker Than Water: The core belief of the Boswells is that family comes before everything else.
- When I Was Your Age...: Granddad is fond of scorning the youth of The '80s as having it much easier than his generation. Given that he is a veteran of World War II and was a young man during The Great Depression, he has a point.
- White Sheep: Adrian, who is the only member of the family to have a job.
- Written-In Absence: Victor McGuire had taken a break from the show and it was written into Series 4 that his character Jack had gone off to visit America.
