As a comedy vehicle for Penelope Keith "Executive Stress" written by George Layton is every bit as good as To the Manor Born. This is empirically backed up by iMDB figures. Layton has form and has been the quiet writer of many excellent "Comedy-Drama" series.
The maindraw back is that this was an ITV comedy, Thames to be exact. ITV doesn't have a track record in comedy and Thames even less so with the only Comedy worthy of the name that ever came from ITV being Rising Damp and that was Yorkshire TV.
This is a shame because it is rather good. Had Executive Stress been a BBC production I think it would be remembered rather better than it is. ITV comedy rarely gets repeated, for good reason in most cases, but this deserves it's spot amongst "The Good Life", "Porridge" and "Yes Minister" on the perennial roundabout of repeats with the BBC big boys.
So what held it back? Well the jarring change of main character didn't help. Geoffrey Palmer for Peter Bowles is hardly like for like, brilliant though they both are. Particularly with Peter and Penelope's history.
The aforementioned Thames production just robbed it of that certain something. Exposure for one. No-one watched ITV for comedy. All of the great comedy experience was tied up in the BBC. John Howard Davies was by no means a slouch (The Goodies, Python, The Good Life etc) but all of that experience was within the confines of the BBC. Maybe it's the fact that writers were restricted to about 22 minutes of actual programming once you take credits and adverts out of the equation. This is opposed to the 29 minutes you would get as a BBC writer / producer. Brevity certainly doesn't make things any tighter. Only Fools and Horses really blossomed when that went to 59 minutes. So maybe the longer screentime allows for something "More".
Anyway this is well worth a watch and is one of the better 1980s situation comedies. The fact that it is an ITV production , makes me even more astonished that it came out so well.
