Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?

One of my favourites from the golden age of comedy.

I cringe at the outside shots of Newcastle because everywhere looks likes a building site. Rows of partly demolished terraced houses and countless rubble filled fields. I can assure you that living through the seventies it certainly didn't look like that all the time. Great to see them order two pints of beer, two bags of crisps, hand over a pound note and still receive change !

As other people have said, there really isn't a poor episode, just some are better than others.....outstanding ones include No Hiding Place and the Great Race.

With regard to the alleged issues they had working together.......this has been totally exaggerated. You can tell by watching that they had great chemistry and the subtle smiles and laughs when certain lines were delivered.

James Bolam has stated in his book that they got on really well and that it was a pleasure to work with Rodney. He was very saddened that Rodney was spreading the story that they parted under a cloud.

James stated that if he had an issue with Bewes then why would he agree to doing the updated series and also the second series.

James Bolam has said on several occasions that he enjoyed working with Bewes but after the series ended, they went their separate ways to do other jobs. He added that as an actor, you worked with people for a few weeks or months and really enjoyed their company, but then moved on to work with an entirely different cast. There was never any bad blood between him and Bewes and he was a little saddened that it had been reported that there was.

You just have to watch carefully to see that extra special chemistry.

I will end with a slight gripe I have. Considering it's a north east comedy, the only genuine actor from that area is Bolam himself. Most other actors put on this strange random northern accent which sounds more Yorkshire than Geordie.

Very few sitcom sequels are better than the first series, and the first series of this was great, but this one is. Bob's social climbing and Terry's determination to stay working class has plenty of comedy opportunities in it and all three main characters are very well cast.

The theme tune is brilliant as are the starting and ending sequences. Bob and Thelma's house is still standing and I wonder if any fans hang about outside and take pics of it.

One of the best ever UK TV sitcoms which cannot be recommended highly enough. It's a comedy must watch, being repeated on TV now, on "that'sTV", 150 on Virgin.

These two seasoned series followed up on the exploits of the lads five years after they were last seen together. It ran from 1972-1974 but what was different from the original series was that Robert Ferris had moved off the shop floor and worked for his fiancés father as a white-collar executive building houses in the north-east. In addition, he'd moved out of his parent's place and purchased a two up two down in an upscale housing estate with a car to boot.

By contrast Terry Collier came back to his hometown after spending five years in the army, embittered by a failed marriage and resentful at missing out on the swinging 60's and permissive society of his beloved north-east. Therefore, the episodes mostly centered round Terry coming to terms with how his hometown had changed and how everybody else had changed too. He stubbornly clung to his working-class ideas and refused to conform to the early 1970's and took a sneering view towards Bob's newfound status and his engagement to Thelma. Terry was consistently coming in between Thelma and Bob trying to turn the clock back and rekindle days gone by with things like, boy's night out. This was not to say Bob himself didn't miss the old days as it didn't take much effort to lead him astray. It was hilarious at the same time watching him try to get Terry to change his ways, responsibility was not in his vocabulary. This led to some great story lines and some great laughs. The early 1970's was considered the beginning of the golden age of situational comedy and this BBC comedy is still a gem to watch. To pull this off you have to have good story lines, good scripts great dialogue between the characters and good actors to play the part and the creators of this certainly hit the sweet spot with this series. It ran a respectable two seasons was followed up by a great Christmas special at the end of 1974 and a film released in 1976 which was not bad, but it had a melancholy feel to it. There was great on screen chemistry between the two lead characters whether both having a laugh and reminiscing about the old days or else were at each others throats.

I can't finish this without commenting about the rift or the falling out between the two actors in real life. I have no insight or knowledge but my feeling is that James Bolan really didn't care for Rodney Bewes either as an actor or a person. Whether this went back to the earlier series or just boiled up during the run in the 1970's it's difficult to say. But when you work together for the best part of four years which included a BBC radio adaption of the series as well as doing commercials for ITV, that could easily test people's patience and staying power. When the series wrapped up James Bolan's next project was "When the Boat Comes In" a serious drama where the character he played was so far removed from Terry Collier you get the impression that he wanted to get as far away from his association with Rodney Bewes as quickly as possible. Bolan would return to comedy in the late 1970's in "for only when I laugh" where he played a bit of a slacker and followed up in other comedies as well as other serious dramas over his career. There never was a reunion which was a shame, because by the 2000's the die had been cast, it was too long after the 1970's for them to be pressured into another series or even a one-off comedy special, but it would have been a great salute and tribute to the fans of the series.

I would highly recommend this series as walk down memory lane at a time when people could laugh at everything and recommend it for younger people that appreciate good quality comedy at work.

UK TV is in forever love with repeats of "classic comedies" to the extent that on Christmas Day, the BBC found room on the schedules for an ancient episode of "Dad's Army" and gave whole themed evenings to the likes of Ronnie Corbett and "The Good Life", all of which are as about as funny as a hip-transplant. But tucked away on Channel 5 was the Christmas Special from 1974 of the best situation comedy ever to grace the BBC, the superb "Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads", starring Rodney Bewes and James Bolam, written by genre-masters Dick Clement & Ian La Frenais ("Porridge", "Auf Weiderschien Pet").

While this Christmas edition is exceptionally funny and what actually prompted me to post this, I well remember that the standard of writing and acting was almost as strong spread over the two or three series they hung around for.

Unlike so many of the other so-called classic sit-coms, some of which I've mentioned above, the eponymous "Likely Lads" are wholly grounded in real-life, dealing with everyday situations, talking in everyday language. Thus there's no need to insert the cartoony outrageous characters so beloved of the Perry/Croft or Esmond and Larbey teams. These were two blokes that you could relate to who could be sat just a few seats up from you in the pub or at the football. The humour is less about the situation than the priceless dialogue, so sharp, barely a word wasted.

There's no artificiality in the setting, very obviously a run-down, depressed Newcastle or in the accents they employ. More than this though, they represent the working-class everyman muddling through life, dealing with the mundane, occasionally falling out with one another but being mates, always falling back in again.

The acting is superb, Bewes never better as the middle-class, socially upward aspirant Bob, Bolam in the only role in which I can watch him, as the down-at-heel feckless Terry and Brigit Forsyth a perfect foil for both as Bob's hoity-toity wife who comes between them.

But it really is more about the writing and time after time Clement and LaFrenais showed a winning empathy with character and the ability to get laughs out of the depiction of ordinary situations. "Porridge" and "Auf Wiederschien" are great too but this is their finest creation and in this Christmas episode, very possibly their best ever hour. Great, nostalgic theme-tune too, co-written by LaFrenais - a record of it even made the lower reaches of the pop-charts at the time

I am in the process of watching re-runs of this on Yesterday and have always loved it, the comedy is so well observed and it just doesn't seem to date at all. Bob and Terry are characters that we can all identify with, we were one of them back in the day, my brother was certainly Bob and I was Terry! Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais' finest work, and that is saying something!