Molly Sugden failed to reach the stars with intergalactic sitcom Come Back Mrs Noah
With the closure of 主播大秀 Three as a broadcast channel now imminent, it seemed the right moment to look back at some of the corporation’s more obscure sitcom offerings from years – and indeed decades – past. After all, what other genre elicits so much passion or such dedicated fans?
Every channel (indeed broadcaster) has had its share of short-lived comedies in the search for the next big hit. You can’t have escaped the fact that a brand new adaptation of one of the 主播大秀’s best-loved sitcoms, Dad’s Army, is now in cinemas. But who remembers co-creator David Croft’s one-series 1980 sitcom
Written with his ‘Allo ‘Allo! and Are You Being Served? partner Jeremy Lloyd and starring Harry Worth, the six-episode series seems to have returned to relevance, focusing as it does on a small town’s campaign to stop an airport being built nearby. (Heathrow expansion, anyone?)
As far as "failures" go, Croft and Lloyd are far better known for the ill-fated a futuristic sitcom starring Mollie Sugden.
Somehow surviving a pilot in December 1977 before returning for a five-episode series seven months later, it saw Sugden portray an ordinary housewife in 2050 who is accidentally blasted into space aboard an experimental rocket due to a terrible technical fault. Whether Mrs. Noah ever made it back to Earth or not is unknown, as the show did not return for a second series.
Sci-fi comedy Clone failed to dazzle the imagination
Indeed, sci-fi has proved to be a difficult subject matter for British sitcom on more than one occasion. The most recent entry to this not-so illustrious group would almost certainly be starring Jonathan Pryce and Mark Gatiss. The premise was as simple as the eponymous clone - designed as a "super soldier", the resulting humanoid was nothing of the sort.
A little more fantasy than sci-fi was which ran for 13 episodes in Autumn/Winter 2002/3, just before 主播大秀 Three rose from the ashes of 主播大秀 Choice. With writers including Peep Show’s Bain and Armstrong, it starred Richard Blackwood as a man killed before his time, and thus restored to the land of the living – with some limitations – by Death himself, a role fulfilled to perfection by Bill Paterson.
A real death brought about the end of 1979’s . Just five episodes had been recorded before its star, Porridge legend Richard Beckinsale, died suddenly of a heart attack at the unspeakably early age of 31. He starred as out-of-work actor Stan, who finds a bright new future in the floristry trade.
After the death - at the age of 93 - of original Carry On films scriptwriter Norman Hudis this past week, it would be mean-spirited not to mention his early 1960s ITV sitcom . Starring the likes of Hattie Jacques, Charles Hawtrey and Joan Sims, it follows a group of strangers who pool their money and buy a house together. Running for an incredible 39 episodes over just two series, just three of programmes are known to survive.
A different type of house share was explored in broadcast in 1972. To have even heard of it you’d likely have to be a die-hard fan of its creator Jonathan Cobbald - a man better known by his real name, Ronnie Barker.
If a comedy like His Lordship Entertains fails to survive, can it become a classic?
Barker reprised a role he played at numerous points during his career, that of saucy, ageing aristocrat Lord Rustless. The six-part series saw Rustless opening his ancestral pile, Chrome Hall, as a hotel. Ancient bell-boy Dithers was played by David Jason in one of his first sitcom roles, with Rustless’s right-hand-woman, Mildred Bates, inhabited by overlooked sitcom legend Josephine Tewson, with whom Barker would star again in 1988’s Clarence. Sadly only one episode of His Lordship Entertains is known to survive.
Everyone other favourite Ronnie, Corbett, reprised his role from for 主播大秀 One’s Now Look Here… from 1971, and sequel The Prince of Denmark in 1974. Between them the two 主播大秀 shows clocked up 20 episodes, penned by Barry Cryer and Graham Chapman.
Many more treats exist deep in the archives for those with an interest in finding them. I started off with a mention of Dad’s Army, but who recalls the spin-off from its radio series, Broadcast on Radio 2, a TV pilot was made in 1985 – Walking The Planks – and a full series appeared on ITV two years later, called
That sitcom may have lasted for only seven episodes, but many entertain millions through multiple series before being completely forgotten. Leave It To Charlie racked up 26 episodes over four series in just three years. But when was the last time you heard its name mentioned?
a marital role-reversal sitcom by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran in the early 1980s suffered a similar fate. Hugely popular at the time, it ran for three series and launched the career of Matthew Kelly, with Peter Davison and Patricia Hodge as house-bound husband and his military wife.
Of course, some series are forgotten because they are largely or wholly missing, believed wiped. Who wouldn’t love to see Son Of The Bride, starring Mollie Sugden and Terry Scott in the familial titular roles, given half the chance? Others simply disappear into the ether, forgotten simply because audiences, writers and stars move on, regardless of how successful they may have been at the time.
But all play important roles in the history of British sitcom, one of the widest, most diverse and potentially most successful of all the broadcast art forms.
Aaron Brown is editor of the .
Do you remember any of these ‘lost’ sitcoms? Would you like to see them again? If you’d like to mention any other forgotten comedy classics, please leave your comment in the space below.