When Flatsharing Became a Television Revolution

When Richard O’Sullivan’s death was announced on 4 September 2026,
most of the affectionate recollections returned to two programmes:
Man About the House and its sequel, Robin’s Nest. They
remembered the charm, the flares and the improbable misunderstandings.
It is easy to forget that the arrangement at the centre of the first
series once felt genuinely modern.

Robin Tripp, played by O’Sullivan, shared a London flat with Chrissy
and Jo, two unmarried women. There was no family relationship and,
despite the suspicions of their landlords, no conventional romance tying
the household together. They were simply young adults making city life
affordable by sharing it.

That premise placed a quiet social change inside a noisy television
comedy.

A household without an
approved label

Earlier domestic sitcoms usually made their relationships obvious.
Characters were spouses, siblings, parents, children, servants or
lodgers. Each role brought rules the audience already understood.

A mixed-sex flatshare was harder to classify. By the early 1970s,
more young people were leaving home before marriage, women’s employment
and independence were changing, and city rents made shared accommodation
practical. Yet the idea that unrelated men and women might live together
without scandal remained sufficiently unfamiliar to generate a weekly
plot.

The Ropers, the couple downstairs, embodied that older unease. George
suspected impropriety; Mildred was more interested in puncturing his
self-importance. Their presence allowed the programme to stage a
negotiation between two Britains without delivering a lecture about
either.

Comedy makes change feel
ordinary

Sitcom is unusually good at domesticating novelty. A newspaper
argument asks whether society should change. A sitcom shows changed
society worrying about the washing-up.

In Man About the House, the flatmates cooked, quarrelled,
dated other people and tried to pay the rent. The comic complications
depended on the audience recognising that the household was
unconventional, but the repetition of ordinary routines gradually made
it familiar. The viewers were invited into the flat every week until the
arrangement stopped needing explanation.

This did not make the programme radical in every respect. Its jokes
reflected the sexual politics of commercial television in its era, and
some have aged much less comfortably than the basic idea of flatsharing.
Cultural importance does not require pretending that an old programme
possessed modern attitudes throughout.

A British format crossed
the Atlantic

The strength of the premise became obvious when it was adapted in the
United States as Three’s Company. The American version kept the
central arrangement and the need to mislead a suspicious landlord, while
translating the characters and comic rhythm for a different
audience.

That export matters because it shows how a particular British social
situation had become a reusable television machine. Three people with
overlapping friendships, limited space and incompatible assumptions can
generate stories almost indefinitely. The flat is both home and stage
set; the front door supplies new complications.

The British original also produced its own sequels. Robin moved into
the restaurant business in Robin’s Nest, while George and
Mildred received a series of their own. A supposedly fragile modern
household had created an entire comic family tree.

Flatsharing outlived the
joke

Today, unrelated adults sharing a home is unremarkable—often less a
youthful experiment than a long-term response to housing costs. The
surprise in watching Man About the House is therefore not its
premise but the amount of machinery required to make that premise
acceptable to everyone around it.

The programme caught a moment when private life was changing faster
than public language. “Flatmate” offered a practical description, but
older ideas about respectability still hovered at the door. Comedy
allowed both to occupy the same building.

Richard O’Sullivan’s relaxed performance was central to that balance.
Robin could appear modern without becoming threatening, and domestic
without being absorbed into the traditional husband role. He belonged in
the kitchen as naturally as in the pub.

The revolution was modest. No manifesto was issued and the rent still
had to be found. But television sometimes records social change most
clearly when its characters are too busy living through it to
notice.

Quick facts

• Man About the House began on ITV in 1973.
• Richard O’Sullivan played cookery student Robin Tripp.
• The flatshare also included Chrissy Plummer and Jo, played by Paula
  Wilcox and Sally Thomsett.
• The format was adapted in the United States as Three’s
  Company.
• British spin-offs included George and Mildred and
  Robin’s Nest.

Sources

• Richard
  O’Sullivan obituary — The Guardian
• Richard
  O’Sullivan dies aged 82 — ITV News
• British
  television comedy collections — BFI