Rita's husband Mike Rawlins (Anthony Booth) is a socialist "layabout" from Liverpool who frequently locks horns with Garnett.

Alf Garnett became a well-known character in British culture, and Mitchell played him on stage and television until Speight's death in 1998.

In addition to the spin-off In Sickness and in Health, Till Death Us Do Part was remade in several countries including Germany (Ein Herz und eine Seele), and the Netherlands (as Tot de dood ons scheidt)[1] in 1969 and as Met goed fatsoen in 1975, the latter was never broadcast; In Sickness and in Health was adapted as In voor- en tegenspoed [nl] in 1991–1997).

According to interviews he gave, the fact that some viewers overlooked Alf's racist views and regarded him as a "rough diamond" disappointed Speight.

He referred to his Liverpudlian son-in-law as "Shirley Temple" or a "randy Scouse git" ("Randy Scouse Git", as a phrase, caught the ear of Micky Dolenz of the Monkees, who heard it while on tour in the UK and used it as the title of the group's next single — though their record label renamed it "Alternate Title" in the UK market to avoid controversy), and to his wife as a "silly [old] moo" (a substitute for "cow" which was vetoed by the BBC's head of comedy Frank Muir).

However, Michael Palin writes in his diary for 16 July 1976 that Warren Mitchell told him that "silly moo" was not scripted, "It came out during a rehearsal when he forgot the line 'Silly old mare'."

Alf was portrayed as an admirer of Enoch Powell, a right-wing Conservative politician known particularly for his strong opposition to the immigration of people from non-white countries.

[7] In interviews, Speight explained he had originally based Alf on his father, an East End docker who was staunchly reactionary and held "unenlightened" attitudes toward black people.

It is claimed that Speight picked up the idea for Alf's bigoted personality from railway station porters he met when he had worked in temporary jobs for British Rail in the London area.

This was claimed by Speight to ensure maximum topicality for the series, although this was disputed by the programme's first producer, Dennis Main Wilson, who stated that Speight was frequently found late at night in a regular selection of West End bars, and that on more than one occasion the writer had to be physically dragged out of such establishments by Wilson and driven home to get the scripts typed up and finished.

As three scripts that were scheduled to be recorded and broadcast towards the end of that series were not ready and actors, crew and Speight had already been paid in advance for thirteen episodes, it was decided that an Easter Monday bank holiday special – "Till Closing Time Us Do Part" – would be made and that this would mostly be made up of the cast and crew ad-libbing within the broad confines of a plot.

Normally, a sitcom would have plenty of time (ranging from several weeks to several months) between recording and transmission to iron out any such script delivery problems.

To combat these problems, it was suggested by the production team that there be "windows" or "spaces" within the script that could easily be excised and replaced with more topical jokes (a frequent tactic used in other topical sitcoms like Yorkshire Television's The New Statesman twenty years later), a suggestion that was initially refused by Speight in the 1960s run of the series but which was taken up during the 1970s run.

Public outcry over the episode "The Blood Donor" as being a particularly distasteful episode and a new Chairman of the BBC Board of Governors – Lord Hill (who had been appointed as Lord Normanbrook's successor when Normanbrook died suddenly in June 1967) – taking a rather different, more conservative approach to the running of the BBC than the liberal and laid-back attitude of his predecessor, were two other factors that turned up the heat of criticism against the series.

Lord Hill had previously been the chairman of the Independent Television Authority and ensured that the ITV network remained relatively controversy-free.

His replacement, Michael Mills, recognised that the series had enormous potential but did not understand why it had to be so topical, controversial or full of swearing and blasphemy, which hugely irritated Speight.

The final straw for the BBC at this time came when a script for the third series, which was intended to be made up of eight episodes, was so late that it missed the scheduled beginning of rehearsals.

Given the problems the series had given the BBC with steep pay increases in the midst of a government-imposed public sector pay freeze, scripts being delivered in varying degrees of completeness (and sometimes not at all), several court cases (usually libel or blasphemy), hundreds of complaints, several run-ins with Mary Whitehouse and the NVLA, the loss of the series' two biggest champions (first Frank Muir, then Hugh Carleton Greene), the new management having different opinions over the programme and the general stress its production placed on staff (primarily down to the incomplete scripts submitted by Speight), all despite its ratings success over ITV (particularly over Coronation Street) in its first two series and its general popularity as a whole, contributed to the BBC getting cold feet over the programme.

In amongst these programmes, Till Death Us Do Part would not look as out of place as it did in the late 1960s, particularly now as the show would be less topical (bar some 1974 episodes) but no less political or controversial, as it had originally been.

The opening titles/end credits of the first colour episodes originally used the black-and-white sequence from the 1960s tinted in red, as seen on UKTV Gold repeats in 2006.

The house seen in the opening and closing titles to the 1960s episodes was located on Garnet Street in Wapping (from where writer Johnny Speight took the Garnett family name).

They are located on Garnet Street in close proximity to the local Wallace James shop, St Peter's Primary School, Gastronomica bar, Docklands General Store and Crane Wharf.

Some of the show's 26 episodes from series 1–3 that were videotaped in black and white and broadcast between 1965 and 1968 no longer exist; they were wiped by the BBC during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

It was screened at the BFI's annual "Missing Believed Wiped" event on Saturday 16 December 2016 at their Southbank venue.

[15] Although Speight said he wrote the series to challenge racism, it was felt by some critics that many people watched it because they agreed with Garnett's views.

[19] Anthony Clark of Screenonline stated, "Sadly, Speight's defence was far from watertight—having a white actor, Spike Milligan, black up and don a turban in one episode is clearly questionable", and added that "In Till Death Us Do Part, Alf's lengthy rants go largely unchallenged; his wife does little more than raise an eyebrow, while the responses from daughter Rita and the wholly unsympathetic Mike are often little more than impotent quips or frustrated laughter.

The series had Alf and Else sharing a bungalow with Min (Patricia Hayes) in Eastbourne following the death of her husband Bert (Alfie Bass).

In the Comedy Playhouse pilot, Alf's family name was Ramsey, but the BBC changed his name to Garnett for the subsequent series, to avoid confusion with the England football manager at the time.

Two feature films were made based on the series – the first was Till Death Us Do Part (1969), whose first half dealt with the younger Alf and Else during World War II, and whose second half dealt with all the Garnetts in the present day being moved from their East End slum to the new town of Hemel Hempstead, and the adjustments and changes that brought on the family.

The fourth series was available in the United States and Canada, having been released before the Network edition and featuring some title sequence variations.