Last of the Summer Wine and Open all Hours

[Lonnie]

THis is really for fans of the above two programmes. Could you imagine a programme centered around Arkright and Aunty Wainright as rival shopkeepers?.

[XxAnniexX]

pmsl yeah that would be a good one!!!

[jenstar]

Hmmm... Roy Clarke's got a thing about shopkeepers called something-right, hasn't he? Never noticed that before!

[andy-hughes]

Sorry to be really really picky, but ...

the premise of Open All Hours applies to all the classic sitcoms - Fawlty Towers, Hancock, Steptoe & Son, One Foot In The Grave, Blackadder - the main characters are all trapped, trapped and kicking against their situation and circumstances. In most, it is two characters who are inter-dependent, indeed manacled together, bonded for life even though they long for escape, they know that their partner would not survive, and indee, neither would they.

Last Of The Sumer Wine has none of this dark undertone - it is essentially a group of old foks enjoying their second childhod - probably because their first one was to miserable and deprived to have been enjoyable, so they are making the most of their second chance at frivolity and fun.

The point I am finally getting to is - each works within its setting, and would not work outside.

[Lonnie]

andy, yes, I agree with you 100%, but the point I was making, or trying to, was that the two shopkeepers in question, are both mean to the extent of ridiculousness, each with their own comedy character, and I just thought a programme, pitting the two against each other, would have been a winner. You wouldn't need the majority of the other characters at all.