Picture from BBC

Sir David Jason is without a doubt one of our best comedy actors who deserved his knighthood for his contribution to British entertainment. Since appearing on television in the 1960s he hasn't put a foot wrong and is one of the few comedy actors to have a clean record as far as quality is concerned and had he died in 2013 he would have left behind a sparkling legacy of such rich characters as Granville, Inspector Jack Frost, Edgar Briggs, Blanco Webb, Pop Larkin and of course Del Boy. His friends, fans and colleagues would have eulogised a flawless man who brought laughter and joy to millions. Sadly, if David Jason dies now, the last thing he leaves behind on television is Still Open All Hours. 

I can only assume that he hasn't taken care of his financial situation in his later years and has found himself in need of a quick fix payday, otherwise why else would be sell his integrity and reputation down the river in such a crass fashion? David Jason is not only taking his own reputation down but by pissing on his grave he is taking Ronnie Barker down with him. In the original series Granville was always wanting to escape the drudgery of his life dedicated to his uncle's shop but was stifled by Arkwright. Steptoe and Son worked along a similar trope but was a much darker story of the claustrophobia of Harold's situation, helped along by the apparent real-life hatred between Wilfred Brambell and Harry H Corbett, and we never found out the eventual outcome. It would have helped if there had been a story that revealed what happened in the interim between the last episode of Open All Hours and the first episode Still Open All Hours because I couldn't help but think that Granville would have sold the shop to Londis or Spar before Arkwright's body was cold. It was pointed out to me on Facebook that the whole conceit of the rebooted series was that Granville became his late uncle without even realising it. As much as he hated the shop, by the time he was left in charge he had wasted too much of his life to start again, and was left to rot in the shop that had begun destroying his soul when he was a child where he was cursed to spend the autumn years of his life locked in a prison of his own making, he didn't even replace that crap till. 

Whatever the reason for Granville deciding to stay in the life he hated and not bothering to break out and see the world, the writers could have done a much better job with this situation. Rather than move on, the sitcom is stuck in the past with the aforementioned till that slams shut for comic effect (you would imagine that Granville might have grown used to it by now) and the cast of characters from the original series. It is a little bit creepy that Mrs Featherstone is now lusting after Granville and Granville leers over Nurse Gladys. Granville now has a son, who is as downtrodden and overworked as he once was, even though if Granville had any heart he would remember the life he was subjected to and might have encouraged Leroy to get the hell out at the first chance. 

Interestingly, this show is written by Roy Clarke who not only wrote the original series but is also responsible for Last of the Summer Wine. Now that Last of the Summer Wine is no longer being made, I have a feeling that the BBC and Clarke are in cahoots to provide the final job for veteran comedy actors and I don't doubt that sooner or later the viewers will have to endure at least one scene involving a character rolling down a hill in a bathtub on wheels.

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 This week's edition of The Sunday Alternative is here. 

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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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 This week's edition of The Sunday Alternative is here. 

The latest episode of The Random Saturday Sessions is here.

Thank you in advance for donating using the PayPal button at the top of this page. It all goes towards creating podcasts, sketches, documentaries, films and more, all of which I will make available for free in return for your generosity.

Picture from Playbuzz

We are almost at the end of our trawling through VHS tapes of irregular Only Fools and Horses and last night watched the 1991 Christmas specials Miami Twice, originally broadcast over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I have not seen these episodes since the original broadcast but remembered the first part being a studio shot sitcom and the second being shot as a movie with no audience and on 35mm film. The two episodes followed each other as a story ark with Rodney Trotter reclaiming his pension money from his old job and Del using the money to book Rodney and Cassandra a holiday to Florida. He knew that Cassandra was unable to travel on the dates he booked and wangled himself the seat on the plane in order to leave the country due to his 'pre-blessed wine' scam going wrong. 

Not one of the best Only Fools episodes (although one of David Jason's favourites), the second half of the story involved a Mafia boss who looked just like Del being under house arrest prior to a trial in which he looked like going to prison for and his henchmen attempting to kill him to make the media think that the Mafia boss had died thus escaping justice. This frankly far-fetched romp was one of David Jason's career low points in my opinion, not matched until his inexplicable decision to agree to Still Open All Hours. What made this worse the second time around was for the VHS release, some twat had edited the two episodes together and added canned laughter as if to prompt the viewer as to when it was time to laugh. This prompt is actually a much needed help when watching something like this because it is hard to know when something funny has happened. 

There aren't many duff episodes of Only Fools and Horses but this is one of them, along with A Royal Flush, the 1986 Christmas Day special and the embarrassingly contrived comeback trilogy that was so bad that they spread it over three years (2001, 2002 and 2003) when it was supposed to have been broadcast over Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day 2001. I can only assume that one of the main cast needed the money.

The Sunday Alternative Podcast #60 is available from here

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October Housekeeping

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Picture from HUKD

When Eric Sykes died I commented that the sitcom Sykes is now a 'ghost sitcom' in that none of the cast are still alive, even Dad's Army have two people hanging in there wondering why they weren't offered a cameo in the new film remake. Today we lost Stephen Lewis, best known (a polite way of saying 'typecast') as Blakey from one of my favourite sitcoms On The Buses. It is only Anna Karen who played Olive that is now preventing On The Buses from becoming another ghost sitcom. I always find it strange when I watch something where everybody on screen is dead, Laurel & Hardy films are a good example because we all remember the two leads but everyone around them is also in the ground. It makes me wonder if they would have predicted that their popularity would continue almost one hundred years later. 

I also wonder about the minor characters in such films or television programmes, for example the extras in a black and white episode of Coronation Street might all be dead with nobody to remember them. 

Stephen Lewis made a rod for his own back when it came to typecasting as he never quite managed to shake off the association with his most famous role, and even his next big part as Harry the signalman in Oh, Doctor Beeching! was Blakey-like in mannerisms. His later appearances in Jim Davidson's Generation Game and The All New Alexei Sayle Show were simply Blakey in all but name. His achievements as a playwright, screenwriter and director have been sadly overlooked as the papers just refer to Blakey being dead. With co-star Bob Grant (Jack the conductor) he wrote several episodes of On The Buses and appeared again as Blakey in a forgettable spin off Don't Drink The Water, which saw his character retire to Spain. Having never seen it before despite being a big fan of On The Buses I watched the first episode on YouTube and can honestly say that when it comes to contrived nonsense I haven't seen anything so piss poor since the first episode of Still Open All Hours. 

As a tribute I think it would be nice if all bus companies agreed to run on time, although living in Nottingham I doubt that would ever happen.

The Sunday Alternative #51 is available from here.

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August housekeeping

We are now in the eighth month of the year and at a standstill as far as work is concerned. In unrelated news, it is my birthday on the 27th of this month so a nice present would be a donation using the PayPal button. This would be spent on creating podcasts, documentaries, short films, comedy sketches and various other entertainments that I will make available to enjoy online for free.

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@SteveOliver76

Thursday 26th December

Last night before we left my dad’s, we watched the 1974 Christmas episode of Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? on BBC4. In my opinion this is one of the best Christmas versions of a sitcom ever made. It hasn’t been seen for ages but both the series have been shown this year which means that James Bolam has lifted his embargo on repeating the show. I remember reading that Bolam had seen red over comments that Rodney Bewes had made to a newspaper and hadn’t spoken since. This of course didn’t do Bewes any favours as the work dried up and he didn’t have the income that a repeat run would have provided.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up was a conversation between the two characters. Terry (Bolam) was ranting against Christmas to Bob (Bewes), during which he declared Christmas to be a commercialized con trick dreamed up by department stores and card manufacturers. He also said that Christmas has lost its meaning, while Bob was all for it and remembered old Christmases from his childhood. I was interested by the fact that the programme was nearly forty years old, and yet this opinion is still trotted out to this day. Has Christmas always had this criticism that it has lost its meaning? How far back does this go? Maybe Christmas has never had any real meaning?

On the subject of sitcoms, I had been waiting for Still Open All Hours with a certain amount of trepidation. With the same writer as the original series and David Jason, who has never taken a duff role, then what could possibly go wrong? It turns out that quite a lot can go wrong. How David Jason was ever tempted to do this is beyond me, although one duff gig in 74 years isn’t a bad hit rate so we can forgive him that, especially as nobody will remember this travesty after today. I can only assume that Johnny Vegas and Mark Williams were star-struck by David Jason and the legacy of the show, as they wouldn’t have considered such a crap script for a brand new show. I especially can’t understand what one of the Chuckle Brothers was doing working as an extra. The script was contrived to include almost every single reference to the original series as possible, which became especially embarrassing when Granville brought out the old shop bike. Maybe there are still shops like that in the north of England, but I’m sure that once Arkwright died then Granville would have sold up to Londis and got the hell out of the place that emotionally imprisoned him for all those years.

Interestingly enough, when it had finished (yes, I saw it through to the bitter end) I turned over to GOLD and watched The Two Ronnies Scrapbook. It used to be quite a controversial opinion to say that The Two Ronnies were better than Morecambe and Wise, indeed it was almost considered comic blasphemy, but I have spoken to a lot of people who share the opinion. Just watching a compilation of clips showed what a fine legacy of work that Ronnie Barker left behind, and that his memory shouldn’t have been insulted by bringing back Open All Hours without him. I’m dreading next year’s Christmas showcase, Still Doing Porridge, starring Christopher Biggins as Slade Prison’s only surviving inmate.

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Friday 6th December

There are only two more recording sessions to go before the end of the year, both of which I’m looking forward to; The CTRL and DH Lawrence and the Vaudeville Skiffle Show. I didn’t want to do one on Christmas Eve of course, as we regard Christmas Eve night as a pyjama evening with Mandi’s cherry Coke gammon for dinner and watching The Snowman. Channel Four have been guilty in the past of showing The Snowman on the wrong day, last year I seem to remember it going out on Christmas Day, when we know that it is essential Christmas Eve viewing. There was a sequel last year called The Snowman and the Snowdog, which wasn’t great, and proved that some things are best left alone. One of the overhyped additions to the Christmas television schedules this year is the follow up to Open All Hours with David Jason’s character now in charge of the shop. This could be either brilliant or terrible, but I would be very surprised if it wasn’t of a high standard seeing as David Jason hasn’t ever appeared in anything rubbish. His usual high standard might turn around and bite him on the arse if it is rubbish, as the public seem to only remember the flops and he did manage to avoid any major flak for the final three episodes of Only Fools and Horses that should never have happened. We seem to be lagging behind as far as Christmas is concerned this year due to my heavy workload and haven’t even watched a great deal of Christmas films, even worse is the fact that we haven’t even bought this year’s Radio Times and TV Times yet. In fact we haven’t even been to Marks and Spencer for our annual visit to buy the Christmas biscuits. Maybe I’m actually asleep and having one of those anxieties dreams where you haven’t sorted anything out and have no time left to do anything.

I often dream that I am involved in a normal, run of the mill sort of day; the shops are open, the buses are running, and life is generally going on. However, in the dream it is Christmas Day and I am wondering why the day is no longer special and trying to remember when this transition happened. In many ways I can actually see this happening in the future, Christmas is already being reduced to a two day event and one day it’ll be something that just happens to be a day mentioned in diaries. It has already happened to Sunday, (it’s even become a working day for me now and don’t forget that self-employed people don’t get double pay for Sunday) and has happened to a lot of the bank holidays throughout the year. There will come a time in the future when parents take their kids to McDonalds on Christmas Day before popping to the supermarket.

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Fetch Your Cloth!

Having seen off the first series of The Mighty Boosh, and series three of Friends, we are now kicking the shit out of Virgin Media’s ‘on demand’ service by way of the very first series of Open All Hours. I don’t need to tell you that Ronnie Barker and David Jason are comedy legends, and seeing them working together is a joy.

As an aside, Ronnie Barker was my first choice for the lead role in the screenplay I will probably never write. He ruined his chances by dying, which wasn’t entirely his fault. My second choice was Eric Sykes, my favourite comedian, but he doesn’t seem to have long left. Especially when I consider the time I am spending writing it, I may have to plump for someone who is really young now as an investment. My current choice incidentally, is David Jason.

As another aside, watch David Jason made to look like an old man when he played Blanco in Porridge. Look at him now; he has aged into the work of a 1970s sitcom make up artist!