Last Of The Summer Wine: The Complete Collection [DVD]

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The 1983 film, Getting Sam Home, used those two verses, with an additional two and played them over the opening credits.

Peter Sallis is Norman Clegg, a redundant Co-op linoleum salesman, recently widowed, comfortably established, but no particular leanings. A photography exhibition at the Library, bringing Bloody Wainwright and Mr Partridge back into the background limelight, inspired Cyril back to his old hobby of photography.The opening episode features here under its original title, ‘Short Back and Palais Glide’, though it’s since been re-named ‘The Lost Key’, which is appropriate for the meat of the episode, the original basicaly eliding the opening scene, at the Barber’s, and the closing scene, at an Old-Tyme Dancing evening. The programme was nominated for numerous awards and won the National Television Award for Most Popular Comedy Programme in 1999. Last of the Summer Wine was set and filmed in and around Holmfirth, West Yorkshire, England, and centred on a trio of elderly men and their youthful misadventures; the members of the trio changed many times over the years.

They shared a childhood and schooldays past but have had little to do with each other until now, when they’re effectively forced into each other’s company.It was more of the same, gradually getting further and further away from reality and more and more characters were added until I gradually lost the ability to suspend disbelief and switched off. Ostensibly because he felt time hanging too heavily on his hands, but subliminally because the Conservative Cyril found it demeaning to be out of work, Blamire decides to get a job, dragging his two redundant companions with him. One additional development meant that the extended cast began to divide, explicitly, along gender lines, adopting a caricature pose reminiscent of Peter Tinniswood’s Brandon Family novels, in which the men, overall, took on child-like aspects, dreaming and obsessing over things that were essentially games, whilst the women acted as hard-headed and practical, looking down on their menfolk as idiots in need of firm schooling, as they had received in school. The series, being staffed by older actors, had suffered losses before, most notably John Comer and Joe Gladwyn. The back cover of the box gives a brief bit of info for that series and a list of it’s dvd’s with the episodes.

Despite numerous cast and production changes over the years, Last of the Summer Wine continued to be popular with viewers and was renewed year after year despite reports to the contrary. The advent of Foggy was a necessary change without which the show, in my opinion, would not have outlasted the decade, let alone become television’s longest-running sitcom ever. Anyone can be, and several times an episode is the butt of the joke (actually it’s usually either Cyril or Compo but Cleggy can cop it too). Needless to say, at the beginning, LOTSW was a very different show to what later generations became used to.I am convinced I watched a Michael Bates episode in which the trio had an outing to Oswestry where Cyril renewed acquaintance with a former NAAFI canteen manageress of whom he had entertained romantic feelings but who had married otherwise. But I have, at least, learned not to dismiss something just because it is popular, and nowadays, if something essentially crap is massively successful, I simply ignore it, rather than get worked up about it. The only times the trio came close to being in concert mentally was in their encounters with others, such as Sid and Ivy at the café, or Mr Wainwright and Mrs Partridge at the Library.