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Scrapbook: What was on TV in 2001?

2017-08-09T16:13:14+00:00

The Office started in 2001, but it wasn't until the second series that Ricky Gervais performed this now infamous dance routine

BBC Genome's occasional Scrapbook series looks back at a past year in broadcasting.

With a new millennium in full swing, 2001 was a fascinating year for television. Reality TV was still in its early stages - the participants in Castaway 2000 returned to society and the first series of Celebrity Big Brother was broadcast as part of Comic Relief. Political change was afoot with a UK general election (in the days before national voting became an annual event) and a new US president was inaugurated. In light entertainment, some seminal sitcoms launched (and ended), and soap fans waited with bated breath to find out who shot Phil Mitchell.

Comedy

A new high point for Slough-based sitcoms was set when Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant unleashed David Brent onto our screens with the first series of The Office, broadcast on 9 July. The mockumentary-style programme focused on the day-to-day lives of its characters, in a fictitious office environment. As part of the BBC Two Comedy Night strand the episodes were sandwiched between The Fast Show and Have I Got News For You (then presented by Angus Deayton). From these humble beginnings, the programme went on to launch some glittering careers: alongside Gervais and Merchant, Martin Freeman and McKenzie Crook went on to star in Sherlock and Pirates of the Caribbean respectively.

The Kumars - alongside Gareth Gates - had a charity hit single for Comic Relief in 2003

Another comedy that leant on mockumentary genre was The Kumars at No. 42, which added a surreal element to the chat-show formula. The nominal premise was that the family of Sanjeev Kumar (played by Sanjeev Bhaskar) had built a television studio in their back garden to help his television career. After the success writers Bhaskar, Richard Pinto and Sharat Sardana had had with Goodness Gracious Me, the show was given a big build up: four pages of that week’s Radio Times were dedicated to it. The first episode was broadcast on 12 November 2001 and the programme was an instant hit. Guests, including Graham Norton and Davina McCall were invited to answer the peculiar and invasive questions of the pretend-family. The show ran for seven series on the BBC, switching from BBC Two to BBC One midway through, until the final episode on the BBC in August 2006.

The highest television viewing figures of the year - and indeed the decade - went to the hit comedy Only Fools and Horses, which returned to the screens for a Christmas special. If Only They Could See Us Now centres on Del Boy and Rodney having to start again after going bankrupt. It had over 20 million viewers in the prime Christmas day slot. If anyone could produce a programme with those viewing figures these days, then this time next year they’d be millionaires.

Reality TV

Although Reality TV now seems ubiquitous across the schedules it was still a fairly new phenomenon back in 2001. Throughout 2000, the BBC’s experimental programme Castaway 2000 had followed 36 people cast adrift on a secluded Scottish island for a year. Early in 2001, when the Castaways returned to civilisation, there was a clutch of programmes showing how the participants readapted to normality and reflecting on their year away. Later on in the year the programme's breakout star Ben Fogle took part in the national hedge-laying championships for Countryfile.

Celebrity Big Brother first appeared on our screens in 2001. Although for its first 10 years on British TV, Big Brother was on Channel 4, the first Celebrity-version of the series was tied to Comic Relief and was partly broadcast on BBC. The programme saw six celebrities including Vanessa Feltz and Chris Eubank enter the Big Brother House for a week and Jack Dee was named champion on the night of Red Nose Day.

Ben Fogle on the Scottish island of Taransay

Politics

In January the BBC covered the inauguration of George W Bush. (It was an international evening for BBC Two - they followed up with World Indoor Bowls.) It was also a big year domestically, with a general election dominating the spring schedules. In the lead-up to the election, leaders from the major parties took part in separate Question Time specials, facing questions from a live audience. The nation at large seemed less engaged, with voter turnout at just 59.4% - the lowest in the UK’s democratic history. BBC coverage of the results on the night of 7 June was presented by David Dimbleby, Jeremy Paxman and Fiona Bruce. Peter Snow was on hand with the swingometer, in his penultimate general election as presenter.

Peter Snow covered every general election from 1983 till 2005

The most challenging event of 2001 was the devastating 9/11 attacks in the US. The BBC Genome schedules show what was due to be broadcast on that day. After the attacks, this was abandoned for blanket coverage from the events in New York. The following Thursday a special Question Time was dedicated to the political implications of the attacks. The episode received complaints about strong anti-American sentiments being expressed by members of the studio audience and a few days later Director General Greg Dyke issued an apology.

Soaps

The big soap story of the year came from Albert Square and the mystery of who shot Phil Mitchell. In the 1 March episode Phil (played by Steve McFadden) was wounded by a mystery shooter outside his house. The episode had 17 million viewers and the culprit remained unknown for more than a month. The BBC even had to provide security for scriptwriters following the theft of a computer containing future EastEnders plotlines. On the morning of 5 April, Gaby Roslin presented a programme live in Albert Square profiling the suspects. That evening nearly 20 million viewers discovered that Phil’s former girlfriend Lisa Shaw was the guilty party. It was the most-watched EastEnders episode of the decade and to allow for the big reveal, the episode was extended to 40 minutes. The listings show that to accommodate this, the Uefa Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Barcelona had to have a delayed kick-off (We don’t know if Steven Gerrard was watching pre-match.)

What did you think of the programmes mentioned above? Or have we missed one that you liked? Let us know in the comments section below:

Advent Calendar Day 11: Tinsel-Free and not-so Joyous

2016-12-11T07:00:00+00:00

Rick Wakeman on Grumpy Old Men At Christmas, 2003

"The children get tired and fractious, Grandpa goes to sleep, Auntie gets indigestion, Dad complains about the expense and I do the washing-up!" - things aren't always joyful, joyful in the holiday season and BBC Genome listings reflect this.

Apart from the usual tragic EastEnders Christmas plots - which should by now be considered traditional, the reports about those having to work over the holidays, and the special programmes for the lonely, there's also the desire for a somewhat alternative celebration, either by slightly changing the menu or rethinking the decorations...

Radio DJs are also known to rebel against the festive overload. John Peel felt the need to declare his Home Truths programme a "tinsel-free zone": "no mistletoe, no fairy lights, just good wholesome fair". Tom Watts opted for an alternative collection of Christmas record that didn't include "Wizzard and Wham!, Slade and Spector", and Chris Moyles and his team offered seven hours of "their own sideways look at the world" on Christmas Day.

Grumpy famous men have also been offered the chance to vent against "pantos, nativity plays, false bonhomie and novelty socks", while grumpy women bemoaned "supermarket shopping" and "multi-tasking". Our favourite, though, is this Woman's Hour listing/song... no bitterness here...

Woman's Hour, Woman's Hour Women all the way.
Have a merry Christmas,
Don't work too hard today. Let him stuff the turkey, Let him fill your sack,
Stay in bed all morning, Let him break his back
With brussels sprouts and holly And artificial snow.
Let him change the fairy lights And buy the mistletoe.
So why not have a change of plan?
We've got the best solution,
Listen each day to Woman's Hour For your New Year's resolution.

Carla's decades of comedy

2016-05-04T09:00:00+00:00

Family was at the very heart of popular sitcom Bread

It’s a little more than 30 years since Liverpool’s most well-known comedy jewel first came to our screens.

It followed the working class Boswell family struggling through the city’s high unemployment and poor prospects in the late 1980s, painting a bleak yet concurrently warm and hopeful picture of life in one of Britain’s major cities.

With curmudgeonly grandad living next door, single mother and devout Catholic Nellie was the centre of every event and the giver of every command in the house, which she shared with her five adult children: Joey, Jack, Adrian, Aveline and Billy. Each contributed a little each week to the housekeeping fund (collected in a ceramic chicken) through almost entirely illegal means, predominantly benefit fraud and the proceeds from stolen goods.

On the surface they appeared to be a thoroughly disreputable bunch, but the bond between the Boswells, their love for each other and sense of family values helped the show to become a hit with audiences. Debuting on Thursday 1st May 1986 at 9.30pm on BBC1, the sitcom returned for a further six series, totalling 74 episodes by the time we waved goodbye to the clan in November 1991.

However, neither families nor Liverpudlians were virgin territory for the show’s writer-creator, Carla Lane. On 14 April, her first and perhaps most celebrated comedy marked its own anniversary of 47 years.

The Liver Birds was co-created and written by Lane, initially alongside friend and fellow Scouser Myra Taylor. Not just written by women, but also reputedly British television’s first series to focus on two female characters.

The Liver Birds was the first of many Lane comedies to focus on women

After the success of the pilot, a short first series followed quickly, in July of the same year. A second series began in 1971 and even after Myra Taylor chose to quit writing and return to life as a mother, the sitcom returned again and again, bowing out in 1978 with nine series and 80 episodes under its belt. Indeed, the enduring popularity and public fondness for the show was such that a revived 10th series of seven brand new episodes broadcast from 6 May 1996.

Last week also saw the 40th anniversary of Sid James’s death, after collapsing on stage at the Sunderland Empire on 26 April 1976. The star was beloved for his roles in the Carry On films, Hancock’s Half Hour, and a range of his own TV sitcoms – most famously Bless This House.

Running concurrently with The Liver Birds from 1971-6, the ITV sitcom was a huge hit for its star. Created by another writing duo, Vince Powell and Harry Driver, it featured Sid as the father of young adults Mike and Sally, and loving husband to Jean – naturally, none of whom he understood one bit, along with the changing world around him.

Brought to a premature end by James’s death, the series saw a number of other writers brought on board after Powell and Driver moved on to other projects, including Carla Lane, initially with Taylor and later alone. In fact, the pair would be the most prolific contributors to the show: of its 65 episodes, Carla and Myra wrote 15 together, with Lane penning a further 10 by herself.

1974 sitcom No Strings perhaps bridged the gap between these early, more domestic and traditional comedies, and the relationship-focused series for which Carla Lane would become most well-known. It starred Rita Tushingham and Keith Barron as Leonora and Derek. When she takes the spare room in his flat, he’s unaware of the impact she’ll have on his life. The 1975 pilot Going, Going, Gone… Free?, about a woman approaching her decree absolute and looking ahead to a single life was Lane’s next step, although it did not progress to a series.

After her comedy successes, Carla Lane devoted her time to animal rights campaigning

1978, however, brought the hit Butterflies, which ran for four series. The sitcom offered an early role for Nicholas Lyndhurst and starred Wendy Craig as frustrated housewife Ria, ever toying with having an affair with sophisticated, attentive businessman Leonard. Lane brilliantly captured Ria’s turmoil, torn between her loyalty to family and her nice but stultifyingly dull husband Ben (Geoffrey Palmer), and the bright future that may have been just around the corner.

The early 80s would bring Carla Lane in contact with an actress with whom she’d work on a number of sitcoms: The Good Life alumna Felicity Kendal. From 1981, Kendal starred in two series of Lane’s Solo as Gemma Palmer, a woman still desperately in love with the boyfriend she’s just thrown out for sleeping with one of her friends. It’s a fascinating study of a woman’s hatred of her own feelings, and efforts to deny them and stand up for herself as she thinks she should.

Writer and star reunited again from 1985, this time on BBC2, with two series of The Mistress. In this outing, Kendal took on the role of the other woman, florist Maxine. Audiences were initially shocked to see the Good Life sweetheart playing the mistress to Luke. She was seen regularly torn between her feelings for and enjoyment of her relationship with Luke, and the guilt and insecurity in having an affair with a married man.

Turning the tables on the genders, 1981 comedy The Last Song focused on newly single Leo Bannister (Geoffrey Palmer again). Awaiting a divorce from wife Alice, the last thing on his mind is women, but Liz – half his age – appears on the scene and quickly finds her way into his affections.

Here, Lane played not just with age-gap love, but examined very similar relationship turmoil to that in her other shows, albeit here from the other side of the partnership. Eventually Alice would cause Leo further angst by putting the brakes on divorce proceedings.

A second series saw Leo single once more, attempting to maintain amicable contact with his wife whilst improving his relationship with their daughters – one of whom was older than Liz!

Divorce was also explored in Leaving between 1984-5. In this particular series Carla Lane consciously broke further from traditional sitcom format into what would now be called a comedy drama: a more serious tone and subject matter, albeit still with laughs. It told the story of a married couple struggling against life in their joint quest for an amicable divorce.

Later series Screaming failed to scale the heights of Lane's big hits

Also running for two series was I Woke Up One Morning, a mid-80s comedy about four recovering alcoholics who meet whilst receiving psychotherapy treatment in hospital; and Liverpool-set Luv (1993-4), which chartered similar territory to Butterflies: Sue Johnston was unsatisfied housewife Terese to successful businessman Harold, and mother to their three adopted children. Launching with a full 10-episode first series, the programme has been described as a much harsher exploration of the frustrated wife theme, and at times difficult to watch.

Finally, lasting just a single series each, we have 1992’s Screaming and Searching (1995).

Screaming was again far more of a comedy drama than sitcom. It showed three old female school friends, now middle-aged, single, and sharing a house together - but none realises that they have all had liaisons in the past with the same man. Lane put the women’s interrelationships under the spotlight, as well as how their dalliances with men affected each other.

Searching, meanwhile, was Lane’s one and only original sitcom for ITV rather than the BBC, and remains her most recent new series to date. Further muddying the waters of sitcom and drama, star Prunella Scales dubbed it a “drama-doc-sit-trag”. The single series was set at the Sunfield Voluntary Therapy Centre, an experimental institution aiming to assist young women with special psychological needs. Again, many of the womens’ problems revolved around the men in their lives.

At some points one could be forgiven for reading misandry into Lane’s work, particularly in the latter, more serial-drama titles. They can certainly be uncomfortable viewing in places, but the underlying current in these female-centric comedies is far more a study of the female psyche, of the complexities of relationships as experienced by women, and the pressures put upon them – both by themselves, and by society. The characterisation of individual male characters seems to lend less to notions of misandry.

With such a heavy record of female relationship-centric work, it’s unsurprising that Lane is sometimes derided or dismissed as writing exclusively for and about women. It’s clearly a topic that fascinated her, and a criticism that isn’t entirely without basis in fact.

But from the early joys of The Liver Birds to the domestic disharmonies of Bless This House and Bread, she was always a writer capable of much more than she is at times given credit for, and perhaps long overdue a reappraisal. As we mark 30 years since Bread first graced our screens, and with a number of her other titles now available on DVD, it might be time to do just that.

Aaron Brown is editor of the British Comedy Guide

What are your thoughts on the comedy output of Carla Lane? Did you enjoy big hits like Bread or appreciate her later comedy dramas? Please let us know in the space below.

The Sunday Post: Lost laughs

2016-02-14T10:00:00+00:00

Molly Sugden failed to reach the stars with intergalactic sitcom Come Back Mrs Noah

With the closure of BBC Three as a broadcast channel now imminent, it seemed the right moment to look back at some of the corporation’s more obscure sitcom offerings from years – and indeed decades – past. After all, what other genre elicits so much passion or such dedicated fans?

Every channel (indeed broadcaster) has had its share of short-lived comedies in the search for the next big hit. You can’t have escaped the fact that a brand new adaptation of one of the BBC’s best-loved sitcoms, Dad’s Army, is now in cinemas. But who remembers co-creator David Croft’s one-series 1980 sitcom Oh Happy Band!?

Written with his ‘Allo ‘Allo! and Are You Being Served? partner Jeremy Lloyd and starring Harry Worth, the six-episode series seems to have returned to relevance, focusing as it does on a small town’s campaign to stop an airport being built nearby. (Heathrow expansion, anyone?)

As far as "failures" go, Croft and Lloyd are far better known for the ill-fated Come Back Mrs. Noah, a futuristic sitcom starring Mollie Sugden.

Somehow surviving a pilot in December 1977 before returning for a five-episode series seven months later, it saw Sugden portray an ordinary housewife in 2050 who is accidentally blasted into space aboard an experimental rocket due to a terrible technical fault. Whether Mrs. Noah ever made it back to Earth or not is unknown, as the show did not return for a second series.

Sci-fi comedy Clone failed to dazzle the imagination

Indeed, sci-fi has proved to be a difficult subject matter for British sitcom on more than one occasion. The most recent entry to this not-so illustrious group would almost certainly be BBC Three’s Clone, starring Jonathan Pryce and Mark Gatiss. The premise was as simple as the eponymous clone - designed as a "super soldier", the resulting humanoid was nothing of the sort.

A little more fantasy than sci-fi was Ed Stone Is Dead which ran for 13 episodes in Autumn/Winter 2002/3, just before BBC Three rose from the ashes of BBC Choice. With writers including Peep Show’s Bain and Armstrong, it starred Richard Blackwood as a man killed before his time, and thus restored to the land of the living – with some limitations – by Death himself, a role fulfilled to perfection by Bill Paterson.

A real death brought about the end of 1979’s Bloomers. Just five episodes had been recorded before its star, Porridge legend Richard Beckinsale, died suddenly of a heart attack at the unspeakably early age of 31. He starred as out-of-work actor Stan, who finds a bright new future in the floristry trade.

After the death - at the age of 93 - of original Carry On films scriptwriter Norman Hudis this past week, it would be mean-spirited not to mention his early 1960s ITV sitcom Our House. Starring the likes of Hattie Jacques, Charles Hawtrey and Joan Sims, it follows a group of strangers who pool their money and buy a house together. Running for an incredible 39 episodes over just two series, just three of programmes are known to survive.

A different type of house share was explored in His Lordship Entertains, broadcast in 1972. To have even heard of it you’d likely have to be a die-hard fan of its creator Jonathan Cobbald - a man better known by his real name, Ronnie Barker.

If a comedy like His Lordship Entertains fails to survive, can it become a classic?

Barker reprised a role he played at numerous points during his career, that of saucy, ageing aristocrat Lord Rustless. The six-part series saw Rustless opening his ancestral pile, Chrome Hall, as a hotel. Ancient bell-boy Dithers was played by David Jason in one of his first sitcom roles, with Rustless’s right-hand-woman, Mildred Bates, inhabited by overlooked sitcom legend Josephine Tewson, with whom Barker would star again in his last ever series, 1988’s Clarence. Sadly only one episode of His Lordship Entertains is known to survive.

Everyone other favourite Ronnie, Corbett, reprised his role from No – That’s Me Over Here! for BBC One’s Now Look Here… from 1971, and sequel The Prince of Denmark in 1974. Between them the two BBC shows clocked up 20 episodes, penned by Barry Cryer and Graham Chapman.

Many more treats exist deep in the archives for those with an interest in finding them. I started off with a mention of Dad’s Army, but who recalls the spin-off from its radio series, It Sticks Out Half A Mile? Broadcast on Radio 2, a TV pilot was made in 1985 – Walking The Planks – and a full series appeared on ITV two years later, called High and Dry.

That sitcom may have lasted for only seven episodes, but many entertain millions through multiple series before being completely forgotten. Starring David Roper and Peter Sallis, Leave It To Charlie racked up 26 episodes over four series in just three years. But when was the last time you heard its name mentioned?

Holding The Fort, a marital role-reversal sitcom by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran in the early 1980s suffered a similar fate. Hugely popular at the time, it ran for three series and launched the career of Matthew Kelly, with Peter Davison and Patricia Hodge as house-bound husband and his military wife.

Of course, some series are forgotten because they are largely or wholly missing, believed wiped. Who wouldn’t love to see Son Of The Bride, starring Mollie Sugden and Terry Scott in the familial titular roles, given half the chance? Others simply disappear into the ether, forgotten simply because audiences, writers and stars move on, regardless of how successful they may have been at the time.

But all play important roles in the history of British sitcom, one of the widest, most diverse and potentially most successful of all the broadcast art forms.

Aaron Brown is editor of the British Comedy Guide.

Do you remember any of these ‘lost’ sitcoms? Would you like to see them again? If you’d like to mention any other forgotten comedy classics, please leave your comment in the space below.

The Sunday Post: Galton and Simpson

2015-09-27T09:00:00+00:00

Shepherd's Bush rag and bone men Steptoe and Son were an enduring creation

Ray Galton and Alan Simpson met while both confined to a TB sanatorium in the late 1940s - an experience turned into sitcom Get Well Soon by Galton and John Antrobus in 1997. Finding they had a sense of humour in common, they began contributing to the hospital radio service. When they had recuperated they decided to go professional, and are first credited with script contributions for the 1951 Light Programme series Happy-Go-Lucky. This starred comedian Derek Roy, but also featured a recurring sketch about Scouts called ‘The Eager Beavers’, one of whom was played by an up-and-coming comedian called Tony Hancock.

Hancock and Galton and Simpson hit it off, and soon they were providing material for him on a regular basis. At first Hancock mainly worked on stage, but gradually his broadcasting appearances increased. He co-hosted the variety series Calling All Forces with Charlie Chester, and later appeared in Forces All-Star Bill. Galton and Simpson wrote all of these, and also the latter’s predecessor All-Star Bill, which gave them the opportunity to work with a number of different comedians. It saw Hancock perform in regular sketches with Geraldine McEwan and Graham Stark, which were the germ of a new idea to have a half-hour comedy programme featuring regular characters without guest musicians or other acts – a concept rarely employed at the time in Britain.

After a while the series was renamed Star Bill and Hancock was credited above the title, although several weeks later he was replaced by Alfred Marks, only returning for a guest slot in the last show. He was back full-time in the second series, and at the end of 1954 a new programme started: the idea of a half hour ‘situation comedy’ was born with “Hancock’s Half-Hour”.

Between the two series of Star Bill, Galton and Simpson had also worked on a series starring Frankie Howerd - already a huge star - which Eric Sykes also contributed to. Comedy writers for the BBC in the early 50s were a pretty close-knit community, and when Spike Milligan was invited by Sykes to share his office on Shepherd’s Bush Green, Galton and Simpson soon followed, and the co-operative agency Associated London Scripts was formed with Howerd and his agent also joining as non-writing partners. Over the next few years a plethora of other writers joined also, notably Johnny Speight (Till Death Us Do Part) and Terry Nation (a Welsh comedy writer who would one day, after being sacked as a writer by Hancock, invent the Daleks for Doctor Who).

Hancock’s Half-Hour launched with a different support cast from the Star Bill sketches. Bill Kerr, a veteran of Happy-Go-Lucky, played Tony’s Australian friend, Moira Lister was cast as his girlfriend, with film actor Sidney James as a rather dubious friend who got Tony into various scrapes. In the convention of the time, all the characters were known by their own names, although Hancock’s character has the full name ‘Anthony Aloysius St. John Hancock’ – in fact his real middle name was John). There was also an actor named Kenneth Williams, relatively unknown like most of the cast.

Although intended to be far more realistic than the usual comedy shows, Hancock’s Half-Hour still had its share of unlikely plots, and Williams proved adept at some of the most bizarre comedy voices on radio (in competition with The Goon Show which had already been running for several years, unfettered by plot, logic or indeed sanity. Galton and Simpson however bided their time, and over numerous series throughout the 50s they developed the radio series until it became closer to their original vision – perhaps exemplified by the often repeated 1958 episode Sunday Afternoon at Home, in which Tony and his friends have nothing to do – a not uncommon experience on Sundays at the time. With minimal plot and judicious comedy silences, it expanded the possibilities of comedy like few other programmes. By this time, Tony no longer had a ‘girlfriend’ in the series, instead the female character was his secretary, Miss Pugh, played by Hattie Jacques. The characters of Sid James and Bill Kerr had subtly altered, with James now more of a sidekick, albeit still a crooked one, although Kenneth Williams was still doing funny voices.

Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, photographed in 1963

The change of emphasis was partly influenced by the fact that in 1956 a television version of Hancock’s Half-Hour had begun. Learning the techniques of the medium quickly, Galton and Simpson soon realised they needed far less verbal material, and fewer regular characters – so the television series effectively became the Tony Hancock and Sid James show (James being the best acquainted with the visual medium through film and television work). Hancock, who had always had a great line in visual comedy, reacting to the behaviour of others with an amazing array of facial expressions (a trait developed while working with comedians like Jimmy Edwards), and television gave him ample opportunity to develop these.

Hancock had made occasional television appearances since 1948, when he appeared in the series New to You with his then partner Derek Scott, and was in a regular sketch called Fools Rush In, part of magazine programme Kaleidoscope in 1951. Either side of his first BBC tv series of Hancock’s Half-Hour he appeared in two sketch series for ITV, but by the late 50s he became established as one of television’s biggest stars, at a time when the BBC struggled to match the commercial channel’s viewing figures.

The radio series of Hancock’s Half-Hour ended in 1959, but the TV version went from strength to strength, with large audiences tuning in to Hancock and Sid’s comedy adventures. While some episodes featured different locations, most were largely confined to the iconic setting of 23 Railway Cuttings, East Cheam, where Tony and Sid shared a house. However, Hancock was an unsettled, insecure performer, and as his success increased he began to worry about how he had managed to get such huge acclaim and popularity.

With the cast having already been pared down for the TV series, he started to wonder if he could succeed without Sid James, and with some reluctance, the writers agreed to try. James was philosophical about the rejection – and had little reason to worry, as Galton and Simpson provided him with his own series Citizen James straight away. He was soon to begin his long career in the Carry On film series and other television projects, which kept him busy up to his death in 1976.

Legendary sketches

Galton and Simpson wrote another series for Hancock, now just titled Hancock, partly because episodes were reduced to 25 minutes to allow for commercials when the shows were sold to other territories. Hopes of selling them to the US came to nothing, but Hancock was hugely popular in Australia. Despite misgivings, this series contained some of the best remembered episodes, not only of Hancock’s career, but of television comedy as a whole – The Bedsitter, in which Hancock is the only character, The Radio Ham, and the legendary The Blood Donor. Ironically, the latter coincided with events which saw the beginning of the end for Hancock. Always a heavy drinker, following a car crash between recordings for the series, Hancock lost confidence in his ability to learn lines – though the shows were by this time videotaped, they were still performed as-live in front of an audience.

In The Blood Donor Hancock was reading from cue cards much of the time, and though his performance is still brilliant, he came to rely on these more and more. His drinking too started to get out of control. After the modest success of his first feature film in the lead role, The Rebel, scripted as usual by Galton and Simpson, he questioned their ability to write for him. After a great deal of work on a follow-up screenplay, Hancock suddenly decided they were too parochial, and decided he could do better himself, and become an international star. He co-wrote his next film The Punch and Judy Man, but ironically it was even more ‘British’ in tone and his subsequent film career was reduced to cameo appearances. He also broke with the BBC at this point, but his ITV shows, written by various writers with a less symbiotic relationship to his comic style, failed to live up to expectations. After a somewhat shambolic last ITV series in 1967, he started making a new series in Australia the following year. However after only two episodes, alcoholism and depression caught up with him, and he was found dead from an overdose on 25th June 1968.

When Galton and Simpson parted company with Hancock in 1961, they immediately found themselves with enough work to keep busy. They had already scripted the first series of Citizen James for Sid, but handed the task over to Sid Green and Dick Hills for the subsequent two seasons. Meanwhile, the BBC’s head of comedy, Tom Sloan, gave them an amazingly open brief, a series of ten one-off comedy playlets on any subject they liked, to see if anything came of it (note: this would not happen nowadays).

It was called Comedy Playhouse. Faced with this generous but daunting task, the two writers set to work. After a decade and more writing for comedians, who usually more or less played themselves and always felt they knew what material suited them, Galton and Simpson could now look forward to working with actors, who had a respect for ‘the text’ and would not insist on changes. That said, most of the stars of the ten plays had comedy credentials of one kind or another, including their colleague Eric Sykes, Stanley Baxter, Bernard Cribbins, Dick Emery, Peter Jones, Alfred Marks, Graham Stark and Sydney Tafler (co-star of Citizen James). One episode though, that did not feature obvious comics, was to star an experienced Irish character actor, and a leading light of Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop. The episode, transmitted on 5 January 1962, was called The Offer, and featured two junk men called Albert and Harold Steptoe. The actors were Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H. Corbett, both of them experienced television performers, Brambell first appearing in 1947 and having credits including the 1954 version of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Corbett had a recurring role in the series New Ramps for Old in 1956 and made several subsequent appearances in plays.

The Cold - a 1960 episode of Hancock's Half Hour

Like some of the best Hancock episodes (almost) were, The Offer was a two-hander. Galton and Simpson had started with snatches of dialogue, and worked out that the relationship between their two characters should be father and son, the latter heading for middle age but longing to get out of his situation, trapped by his needy and manipulative father and the hand-to-mouth existence as a rag-and-bone man.

Almost in one bound the programme transcended the conventions of comedy. Had it not been for the studio audience it could have been mistaken for a bleak drama of the human condition, with situations skilfully moving from the comic to the near-tragic in a few lines. At once, it was recognised that this was something beyond the usual class of material even with Galton and Simpson’s high standards. Although they were to go on to write another full series of Comedy Playhouse in 1963, The Offer was to be the only one of their pilots to be developed into a series. Comedy Playhouse continued for many years, and became the source for a number of successful series by different writers.

The new series, Steptoe and Son, was quickly put into production. After a new opening sequence was filmed to replace the Comedy Playhouse titles, The Offer was repeated on 7th June, followed by another five episodes. Such was the immediate huge success of the series that the BBC started repeating the new episodes only three weeks afterwards. A further series was then commissioned to start in January 1963, preceded by a short mini-episode within the annual Christmas Night with the Stars programme. A third series followed in January 1964, and a fourth in October 1965. And that, for the time being, was thought to be that…

The four 60s series of Steptoe were notable for the consistently high standard of the writing, as Galton and Simpson relished the opportunity of working with Brambell and Corbett, developing the characters and their back stories. Although lacking the clout and ego of a star like Hancock, the two actors were not without their own personal issues. Corbett especially found to his dismay that his serious acting career was blighted to some extent by his fame as a comedy star. He had been an ‘actor’s actor’ who others would come to see perform, and was known for his Shakespearean work – but like many others with a family to support, the money and security was welcome.

Funny and poignant

When they all called it a day after series four of Steptoe and Son, Corbett found that he was typecast – and in an episode of the series Acting in the Sixties in 1967, he can be seen trying to play the part of the ‘serious’ actor, and somehow failing. Feature film success eluded him, and while Brambell was content with what came along (during the original run of the series he had a major role in the Beatles’ first feature film A Hard Day’s Night), Corbett was doubtless in two minds when the BBC decided to revive Steptoe and Son, in colour, in 1970. The role had taken a while to go away, since as well as guest appearances on The Ken Dodd Show and Christmas Night with the Stars, there was a radio version of the series and all the original television episodes were repeated through 1967.

The new series, heralded in Radio Times as The Return of Steptoe and Son, began with an episode showing the death of the Steptoes’ beloved cart horse Hercules, and in a way like another 60s comedy series that was revived in the 70s, The Likely Lads, there is a more melancholy feel to the new version. Harold in the 70s lusting after dolly birds and foreign travel is a more tragic and pathetic figure than he was in the 60s. Colour and better quality pictures somehow made his desperation to escape seem all too likely to fail, and yet there was a slightly less plausible feel to the episodes. Some of these trod slightly familiar ground, but unlike Sykes which re-made black and white episodes directly in colour, there was plenty of innovation, and a number of classic editions, including Divided We Stand in which the Steptoes partition their house to avoid each other, and The Desperate Hours in which two escaped convicts (including Leonard Rossiter) find returning to prison preferable to the miserable life of the Steptoes.

Four series were also made of the colour revival, and instead of sketches, Christmas was celebrated in 1973 and 1974 with double-length episodes, in the last of which Harold finally managed to escape on holiday without his father.

After eight series, two Christmas specials, various sketches, record albums, radio versions and two films under their belt, it was finally time to call it a day for the Steptoes (well, almost...)

Sadly, Corbett never found another vehicle to match Steptoe and Son, and his serious acting career never revived. After various other roles in television and films, including a reprise of the Steptoe characters in adverts and stage tours, he died of a heart attack in 1982, three years before the death of Wilfrid Brambell (though playing his father, Brambell was only 13 years older). Brambell, who in real life cultivated a sophisticated and dapper image, also found little fame in later years, despite making an appearance in the sitcom Citizen Smith in an episode confusingly called Only Fools and Horses.

Galton and Simpson never managed to top their success with Steptoe, and after another series of comedy pilots for ITV in the late 70s they decided to end their writing partnership, though they have remained close friends ever since. In 1996, Paul Merton starred in a series of adaptations of some of their old scripts, a mixture of Hancock and Comedy Playhouse episodes, though this met with mixed reviews.

But nothing can take away their place as two of the best, most original and skilled comedy writers that have ever emerged from radio and television. Their shows are still funny and poignant today. Hancock’s Half-Hour changed the face of comedy and was a vehicle for one of the greatest instinctive craftsmen of 50s broadcast comedy. The acclaimed Steptoe and Son was one of those creations in TV history where a mixture of long experience and a series of happy accidents produced an enduring classic.

Andrew Martin will be your regular Sunday guide through the history of broadcasting by digging out archive gems and information from the BBC Genome listings.

Your 'forgotten' 1990s sitcoms

2015-08-24T10:00:00+00:00

Maureen Beattie played a Romanian exile in bakery sitcom All Night Long

A delve into the listings to unearth some long lost sitcoms from the 1990s jogged a lot of memories on Genome's Facebook and Twitter channels. Here's a round-up of comedies from those days which failed to make it beyond one series...

The Sitcom Club nominated All Night Long (pictured above), a 1994 comedy set in a round-the-clock bakery which starred Keith Barron as a reformed burglar and other characters including a Romanian migrant called Vanda. It was on air for just six episodes.

Aaron Brown, meanwhile, says he was a big fan of All Along The Watchtower (pictured below), and is "still gutted" a second series never materialised. The comedy was set at a remote RAF early warning base in a remote part of Scotland, where the news that the Cold War is over hasn't quite hit home.

Another offering from Scotland was The High Life, a caper about the cabin crew of an airline which starred Alan Cumming and mentioned by Chris Gilmour. While it may not have been forgotten, the show only lasted one series plus a pilot episode.

Kevin Ryan contacted us on Facebook suggesting Starting Out, a comedy from the tail end of the 1990s dealing with the romanic entanglings of four people in their twenties. It came from Maurice Gran and Laurence Marks, who write the mighty Birds of a Feather - but this one failed to take flight.

The creators of Father Ted came back with sitcom Hippies, but it was canned after just six episodes and a critical basting. Starring Simon Pegg, the take on 1960s culture was remembered fondly by Simon Love, while Dave Rhodes said: "The hype machine suggested Hippies would be Fawlty-meets-Blackadder - what we got (though good) could never match the marketing."

Thank you for all your suggestions - please keep them coming for this and all other topics.

Scottish offering All Along The Watchtower failed to develop past series one

'Lost' sitcoms of the 90s

2015-08-21T09:00:00+00:00

Honey For Tea failed to match the success of The Good Life for Felicity Kendal

Absolutely Fabulous, The Vicar of Dibley and Keeping Up Appearances are comedies from the 1990s that everyone remembers. They were huge successes and took flight in the imaginations of viewers.

But as well as the triumphs there were sitcoms that failed to to make an impact. It was only working with a collection of programmes from the 90s and Genome that gently reminded me of those short-lived comedies that now languish in the listings.

In 1993, Honey For Tea hit our screens, starring Felicity Kendal as a Californian transplanted to genteel Cambridge. Its first listing stated it "should be guaranteed success" with its writing and acting pedigree. But it was mauled by the critics and didn't survive beyond a first six-part series.

Another star vehicle which was unable to set the world alight was Bonjour La Classe, a sitcom about an idealistic yet hapless languages teacher played by star of The Young Ones, Nigel Planer. It too was cancelled after one series.

Other forgotten 1990s 'gems' and one-series comic wonders that I've encountered on my travels include Every Silver Lining, a "gentle comedy" about an East End cafe. It featured Fawlty Towers star Andrew Sachs and Frances de la Tour, who has recently appeared in ITV's Vicious.

Caroline Quentin, a cornerstone of the massively successful Men Behaving Badly, also fared less well in Don't Tell Father, a family-based sitcom which didn't have legs in the end.

Discovering long-lost sitcoms is just one journey you can take by delving into the Genome listings, which are filled with the obvious and more hidden. As for comedy series from back in the 1990s, do you still remember the ones that sank almost without trace? Were you sad when they didn't come back? Please let us know!

Niger Planer's hapless Laurence Didcott graced our screens for just six episodes

On This Day, 1968: Dad's Army first episode

2015-07-31T12:14:19+00:00

Dad's Army Episode 1: The Man and The Hour, 1968

On July 31st, 1968, the first episode of Dad's Army was broadcast on BBC One. The listing on Radio Times magazine swiftly introduces the storyline: "our hero forms a platoon of Local Defence Volunteers to defend our island home."

To commemorate 47 years since this first broadcast, we invite you to browse around this collection of letters and internal memos about the programme and watch an episode of Season 3, which will be available on the iPlayer for a few more weeks.

You can also share your memories about the series here on this blog using the comments box.