While some condemned its racist and sexist humour, this was often simply a plot device to show the bigotry of the main character, Edward Melba "Ted" Bullpitt (Ross Higgins), a white Australian, conservative, bigoted, Holden Kingswood-loving putty factory worker and WWII veteran who recalls his difficult childhood in ever more exaggerated ways.
He lives for three things: his beloved chair in front of the TV, his unsuccessful racing greyhounds and his worshipped Holden Kingswood car (late in the show's run Ted traded-in the Kingswood, which had gone out of production around the time the series began, for Holden's replacement mid-range family car, the Commodore). His long-suffering wife, the vague and dithering Thelma (Judi Farr), was cast as a traditional housewife trapped by Ted's conservative family views, but she often got her own back on Ted.
Humour was generated by the conflict of Ted's traditional views and his children's progressive nature. For example, his son Craig (Peter Fisher) is portrayed as a sexually rampant medical student and is referred to as an "Al Grassby Groupie", a reference to a progressive politician of the time. His daughter, Greta (Laurel McGowan), is portrayed as a feminist and is married to Bruno (Lex Marinos), the son of Italian immigrants, to which Ted strongly objects (often referring to him as a "bloody wog"). Other politically-incorrect humor includes Ted's references to Neville, the concrete Aboriginal garden statue.
At other times, humour was based on the more traditional comedic methods of poorly thought-out schemes of Ted's (usually get-rich-quick); class differences (between the suburban Bullpitts and Ted's upwardly-mobile sister-in-law Merle) and simple misunderstandings leading to a chain of humorous events.
