To some, ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ is the ultimate television comfort watch, or a philosophical masterpiece. But to others, it was a Sunday night sentence of ‘boredom’ that lasted thirty-seven years.
So, we’re going to look at why the British public fell in love with Compo, Clegg, and Foggy, and why a vocal minority couldn’t wait for the bathtub to finally hit the bottom of the hill. Is it a timeless classic of British character writing, or was it a ‘zombie sitcom’ that stayed at the party far too long? Let’s look at the evidence.
In this video we are looking at a tv sitcom about an ordinary family, they’re not quirky like ‘2point4 Children’ or have a 40-year old son still living at home like in ‘Sorry!’ but there is a twist. This is a British Muslim family living in Birmingham with a status seeking father, a long-suffering wife and daughters trying to cope with tradition and modernity. So, let’s see what people loved or hated about ‘Citizen Khan’.
Fans of ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ might recognise the first image as a location regularly used for filming the series. It is Scaly Gate, viewed from the junction of Intake Lane and Hirst Lane, near Holmfirth.
View of Scaly Gate, (as seen in season 9 episode 5) viewed from the junction of Intake Lane and Hirst Lane, near Holmfirth.
This is where the trio crashed while riding their three-man bicycle; Ogden Butterglough’s Mini crashed; and, Norman’s gas bar-b-que blew up.
A few years ago the triangular piece of land was bought by a fan of the show, they had the undergrowth tidied and installed a locked gate so they could let fans use the area.
Land at Scaly Gate, near Holmfirth, before the gate was stolen.
The owner hasn’t visited the spot for a while and on a recent visit discovered the gate had been stolen! It is an isolated area – ideal for filming the show – but it also means that there is no one to see who is coming and going. The theft has been reported to West Yorkshire Police, but being so out of the way and having no idea when the gate was stolen, there seems little the police can do.
It might be understandable that a sitcom where “nothing happens” would not be considered worth watching and would inevitably be disliked by people who expected the laugh-a-minute chaos of some tv sitcoms.
With that in mind, there seems little hope for this very niche sitcom, hidden away on Monday at 10:00pm on BBC Two. Except that the apparent simplicity of ‘The Royle Family’ belies the genius writing of Caroline Ahern and Craig Cash, and their relate-ably indolent tv watching family.
The BBC Comedy Playhouse episode ‘Are You Being Served?’ was broadcast on 8 September 1972 and a series began in March 1973.
The sitcom, based in an already out-dated department store, was a hit with UK audiences and was popular in English-speaking countries worldwide. In this tribute we bid a proper farewell to the managers, shop assistants and customer of Grace Brother’s department store.
In this trip to the ‘TV Pilot Graveyard,’ we’re pulling back the curtain on the chaotic, often absurd, world of media sitcoms.
Whether it’s the urgent deadline of a newspaper office, the ego-driven chaos of a TV studio, the quirky personalities behind the mic at a radio station, or the glamorous (and not-so-glamorous) lives of magazine editors, this subgenre has always promised a behind-the-scenes look at the content we consume. But for every ‘Drop the Dead Donkey’ or ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show,’ there’s a whole newsroom of rejected pilots. Let’s dig into the stories that almost broke, but instead, just broke down.
