You won't be disappointed!

Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Maude is an all-time favourite of mine, which has finally made it on to DVD after many years of waiting. I used to love watching with my mother. It was an amazing bonding experience to laugh in unison with these colourful characters, and we discovered our similar sense of humour. As with so many shows with headlining female characters, this show is not only a stand out model of it's time, it tackles the human condition with the perfect balance of heart and humour. A stellar cast with the inimitable Bea Arthur as Maude, this is a superbly crafted comedy which deals with all kinds of matters in life in with wit and wisdom. A great dose of 70's fun and style.

I watched nearly three seasons of this television show for its leading star Bea Arthur (and then once I had started, for Adrienne Barbeau). I loved seeing Arthur and Rue McClanahan on a show together before The Golden Girls, a show of absolute comedic gold, where they played Dorothy Zbornak and Blanche Devereaux, respectively. However, I couldn't help but think that Maude was a hypocrite, someone I absolutely couldn't sympathise with and Maude's husband, Walter, was even worse. "Maude" disguised itself as a feminist, liberal sitcom, but it was and is neither of those things. Obviously, watching the show over 40 years after it originally aired on TV makes it seem aged, and sure what was liberal then may not considered liberal anymore. For example, interracial marriages, those are pretty standard nowadays - they're more of an issue concerning rights rather than just a left- wing demand. Maude would talk proudly and assert herself as a leading woman, but cower at the slightest suggestion from Walter. We are suggested to believe that they are a great couple because Walter is the only one who can "control" his woman.Another thing that bothered me about this show is that the majority of the episodes were written by male writers. And NO, a man can never know how to write female characters or dialogue as well as a woman. Plain fact based on the fact that a man does not grow up experiencing what it is like TO BE a woman. There should be no argument on that front. There were plenty of great female teleplay writers in the day, and they should have been writing for this show if the show was so concerned about passing for a show for women. Furthermore, not ONE episode of the 141 episode show that ran for 6 seasons was directed by a woman. Sure, my problem is not necessarily with representation, but rather with what they were trying to sell. They claimed that "Maude" was a woman's show, but didn't utilise any female directors or as many female writers as they did male. That little fact lowers the quality of the show for me tremendously. Maude would sometimes say something so blatantly sexist or racist that I couldn't believe my ears! She claimed to be a feminist and advocate of PoC rights, but every episode she would be shown to be a hypocrite in some way. Now that to me does not make a good show. And quite frankly, it's the fault of the studio for hiring all the wrong sorts of people to write and steer the show. It's not enough to have female leads, if females aren't also the ones accurately creating and controlling the development of those characters. Still, the show is not as bad as other shows of the time or of the present day, and for that it is still above a 6 star rating.

Unfortunately, I never saw Maude until I got the DVD first season of her show. It appeared nowhere in syndication maybe because it was too controversial and might offend too many people. Compared to other shows today, Maude is quite mainstream and ahead of it's time. I loved Beatrice Arthur in this role of Maude, forget Dorothy Zbornak. Bea plays a terrific Maude Findlay, the cousin of dimwitted Edith Bunker, from All in the Family. Anyway, the casting of Bill Macy as Maude's fourth husband is genius. They work so well together. Adrienne Barbeau is terrific as her divorced daughter, Carol. Of course, we never see Philip, the eight year old dimwitted grandson. Then there is the supporting cast which is stellar like Conrad Bain as the conservative Republican right wing doctor neighbor and friend to Walter's character and Esther Rolle who plays the African American maid, Florida Evans who is fawned over by Maude's character in the beginning that she doesn't get much work done. Don't forget Rue McClanahan as dimwitted Vivian and friend of Maude. I can't help but like Maude. For all things that she gets wrong, she gets a lot of it right. Today's television writers and developers should learn from the sitcom master, Norman Lear, that a great show like Maude's can be both controversial and funny and genius too. Most sitcoms today lack the balance between left and right. Lear's sitcoms provided both sets of opinions without winning the battle. I'm sure if the sitcom people today would watch, they might learn something about developing quality sitcoms. Remember it's not quantity but quality and it's a shame. They think we want to see beautiful people like Friends in sitcoms with minor problems and the same point of view.

Norman Lear is notorious for his liberal (so they called it ground-breaking) television series of the 70's in which he tampered with conservative censors' traditional television taboos. "All in the Family" was the first step, and despite the over-the-top stereotypes, it succeeded. The downside is the way the show outdated itself by being too topical, but on the other hand it stands as a time capsule. "Maude", a spinoff based upon AITF's recurring character, was a novelty at the time and chose to play the feminist card (however loosely), but at the end of the day, the only element that survived the translation between the two programs was the heavy dosage of loud shouting matches. Bea Arthur is a better actress than this show displays, since she is rarely given the opportunity to do much more than posturing and screaming "Walter" repeatedly. Many 70's programs are now waving the banner of 'retro' to gain some sort of badge of hip for the straplings that weren't there; this show should be returned to the vaults and only drudged up for retrospectives iconifying what made this era of entertainment the very worst that the century had to offer.