Last Of The Summer Wine: The Complete Collection [DVD]

Product Information

All 13 episodes from the first two series of Roy Clarke's popular comedy set in the Yorkshire Dales. However, Brian Wilde found the touring version uncomfortable and this either caused, or at least exacerbated personal differences with Bill Owen which led to his decision to quit the show in 1983. They need Compo as a third pole, a mediator, a contrast, someone to jointly pick upon, even as his presence facilitates either of them picking on the other.

The BBC now serves part of its audience worse than it did before, because it lacks the confidence to follow its remit properly. Thus, when Bill Owen died in 1999, having filmed only two episodes of a twelve episode season, I was curious as to how LOTSW would handle this, and how it would continue without him. Popularity has never been any sort of guide to quality – Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Justin Bieber and One Direction – and I’m as guilty as the next man, in my younger days, of turning up my nose at something that was overly popular.Composing the score for each episode until his death in 2007, [29] Hazlehurst spent an average of ten hours per episode watching scenes and making notes for music synchronisation. The episodes were filmed and then shown to preview audiences, whose laughter was recorded and then mixed into each episode's soundtrack to provide a laugh track and avoid the use of canned laughter. A lot of that can be described in negative terms: it isn’t soft, it isn’t cuddly, it isn’t slapstick, it isn’t a series of schticks from an array of characters who wqheel on and off to do their bit and dilute the amount of screentime that reduces the workload for an aging cast of characters. Compo’s mooning over Norah Batty again (not that way though at this early stage you wouldn’t put it past him) and gets his chance when Wally makes a break for it and runs home to his mother. BBC producers hated this at first and insisted that it remain a temporary working title, while the cast worried that viewers would forget the name of the show.

Ostensibly because he felt time hanging too heavily on his hands, but subliminally because the Conservative Cyril found it demeaning to be out of work, Blamire decides to get a job, dragging his two redundant companions with him. The 1981 Christmas special, "Whoops", had two verses of lyrics written by Roy Clarke that were performed over the closing credits. My Uncle, who had also loved the first two series, chose to stop watching now, complaining that, instead of the equality of bickering between the trio, it was now Compo and Clegg versus Foggy. Last of the Summer Wine inspired other adaptations, including a television prequel, [12] several novelisations, [13] and stage adaptations.There is a follow-up, ‘Curried Soul’ (on which the piano is played by aspiring sessionman Elton John) which, despite it being the follow-up to a massive hit, Radio 1 is curiously reluctant to play, even as something for the DJs to talk all the way through. Every single episode of the world's longest-running sitcom: all thirty-one series of the BBC's Last Of The Summer Wine. It worked for a long time but gradually, then floodingly, the variety had to be recreated by doubling, trebling, quadrupling the supporting cast, each coming on and off to do their schtiks in multiple cameos. Foggy, and all those who have assumed his status in later years, is the butt, and Clegg and Compo the opposition, so to speak.

It premiered as an episode of Comedy Playhouse on 4 January 1973, and the first series of episodes followed on 12 November 1973. Main article: List of Last of the Summer Wine characters The most famous of the Last of the Summer Wine trios: From left to right: Peter Sallis as Norman Clegg, Brian Wilde as Walter "Foggy" Dewhurst, and Bill Owen as William "Compo" Simmonite. It’s a valid question, especially for a national, public broadcaster, with a duty to reflect the nation and its tastes.W. Bell, Last of the Summer Wine became the first comedy series to do away with the live studio audience, moving all of the filming to Holmfirth. The series was probably at its commercial peak, and certainly at its most respected, in that late-Seventies/early-Eighties period. Part of this is life: the longer we know people, the more we accommodate them, the more we understand them, the more situations occur that throw people together, force them to co-operate and from which contempt starts to turn towards respect. Compo seizes his chance to get his feet under the table, romancing Norah, even getting dressed up smart (in Wally’s left-behind clobber) and combing and parting his hair! All three set up fairly loose situations and then expect the three stars to carry half an hour with free-form conversation, non-sequitors, ‘Yorkshireness’ and silliness.