Picture from BBC
When the BBC inexplicably revived Open All Hours starring David Jason in a rare duff role, I commented on whether they would do Still Doing Porridge in which Christopher Biggins is the only surviving inmate from the original series. There are comedy writers trying to get their work seen and heard so why the BBC (and ITV of course) insist on bringing up the past is a question best answered by them. Obviously Still Open All Hours isn't the worst sitcom in the world but it should never have been made because of the glaring holes in the 'sit', the most obvious being that Granville hated the shop so much that as soon as Arkwright died he would have sold out to Spar or Londis and got out of town as soon as possible.
As part of a celebration of the art of the sitcom, the BBC are showcasing some new shows alongside chucking out some remakes and re-imaginings of popular sitcoms from yesteryear. The BBC stupidly wiped several television and radio shows due to the cost of tape, and as such we are without certain programmes, or the archive is incomplete. Hancock's Half Hour has already been re-worked on radio using scripts from lost shows and another one is on the way for television along with a no doubt very carefully chosen episode of Till Death Us Do Part. These will be interesting to watch as well as giving us our only chance to see these forgotten episodes.
This week we were treated to remakes of Are You Being Served?, Porridge, and a revival episode of Goodnight Sweetheart. There was also a prequel to Keeping Up Appearances that is best left unmentioned. Are You Being Served? was set in 1988, three years after the original series ended and a few laughs aside, was like watching an amateur dramatics group putting on a tribute show. Porridge on the other hand was cleverly made and bang up to date with Fletch (Norman Stanley Fletcher's grandson) inside for cyber crimes, the word 'cyber' being the most dated thing in this - does anyone outside of the 1990s still use that word? This Fletch was played by an actor/comedian who up until now has been something of a non-event, Kevin 'the kid from Muppet Treasure Island' Bishop, who I have to say played a blinder in this role and should be an obvious choice should they decide to turn this one-off into a series. It ran the risk of treading into contrived territory when Fletch's older cellmate alluded to knowing his Granddad, but this became a warm tribute to Ronnie Barker and Richard Beckinsale. This could be the sitcom that stops the great Mr Barker from the turning in his grave that began when Still Open All Hours was dreamed up.
One of those oddly compelling sitcoms that I will always watch when shown on some cable channel or another is Goodnight Sweetheart. I can't remember it being a big noise when it was first broadcast in the 1990s but it made up for that when it was revived as part of this season. In all honesty, this was never a show that fully got to grips with the concept of time travel and had several irregularities that simply aren't worth going into because time travel isn't real and therefore who am I to say what the real rules are? Gary Sparrow is unable to pick and chose his time unlike most other time travellers, he has to make do with the same neighbourhood in two tandem eras; if he leaves the present day at noon on Sunday he can walk straight into his other home life just in time for roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. In the last episode of the original series he was trapped for good (spoiler, not for good) in 1945 and we catch up seventeen years later with the Sparrow family still in the pub in 1962, the year he was born. Missing modern food and trapped in a life he knows nothing about he goes to witness his birth and holds himself as a baby which throws him into the present day. This was actually the clever part because now Gary Sparrow is out of time in both times as 2016 makes no sense. The east-end he left behind is now a regenerated Hipster haven and everyone is fixed to a smart phone. Even though he didn't question the vaping from the man in the shop, he was flummoxed by tablets and mentions of a long list of phone apps.
Imagine everything you know about the last seventeen years and going back to 1999 to explain it. He has missed social media, regeneration, 9/11, even David Bowie's death. I would have liked to have seen him going into a pub for a proper beer and being faced with craft ale, especially as Gary was a smoker and in the 1960s he would never have imagined something as stupid as not being allowed to smoke in a pub being introduced, so to have him face a barrage of complaints for lighting up would have been a little aside that the writers seemingly missed. Of course the holes were still wide open, Michael Sparrow owns the rights to a Noel Coward song which he doesn't seem to have earned much from, and The Beatles have started releasing songs 'stolen' from Gary (one of the running jokes of the series was Gary passing off popular hits as his own compositions) yet doesn't do anything about it. If he had written 'Love Me Do' in wartime wouldn't it have travelled? I don't know, it's not worth getting too hung up on this kind of detail. This definitely needs a series though as the concept of being out of time in what is supposed to be his present day is a plot with legs, especially as he still has Ron as his foil and he has a daughter in the present day.
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The latest episode of The Random Saturday Sessions is here.
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