Summer Wine still flowing
Friday, June 26, 2009 by Graham Kibble-White
The BBC has announced that Last of The Summer Wine has been recommissioned.
Burt Kwouk (Entwistle), Brian Murphy (Alvin) and Russ Abbot (Hobbo) - the current cast
Many commentators thought the series, which finished its run recently on BBC1, was being put out to grass. In fact, the show’s producer Alan Bell even said as much last December.
The show is set to go in front of the cameras again in a matter of weeks, with Bell once more helming the production.
Mark Freeland, Head of Comedy at the BBC, said: “I am pleased that Roy Clarke’s much loved and unique comedy is once more returning to BBC1.”
Writer Roy Clarke said: “It’s like going home again.”
Hmm, “unique” feels like a loaded word, a bit like whenever Sir Humphrey called one of Jim Hacker’s ideas “courageous”. There’s no longer any amusement to be derived from the fact Beeb keep on recommissioning this show. The format is completely shot to pieces by virtue of Bell’s fondness for signing up every TV comedy performer over 60. There are no plots any more, just mutually exclusive exchanges of dialogue. The oldest cast members can’t even get insurance to be on location. The fact it’s coming back smacks of the Beeb running scared – yet again – of a tiny minority of columnists in the press. Anyway, I thought the last series, the one that introduced Abbot and co as the new trio, was a ratings flop.
It’s had its day.
Not that there’s no fun to be had with old people in comedy – Still Game for instance. But crucially, that is performed by younger actors..
Hey, Roy Clarke may even be persuaded by the BBC to write a new joke for this series…
Is Peter Sallis not in it? I would have loved to have seen the ep where he was written out / killed off.
I bet it involved him being in a runaway bath somewhere on the Yorkshire Moors…
With ITV now abandoning the grey market( Heartbeat and The Royal being cancelled), maybe the BBC now sees itself as championing the cause. However, a large part of Last of the Summer Wine’s audience has died out and is not being replaced, most people see it as embarassing and it should have been laid to rest years ago. However, someone in the BBC must like it as it keeps going.
This is comedy at its best, not like this rubbish today with young boring actors and writers who have the sense of humor of a tic turd