Sorry!

I passed on this little gem the first time around but now I'm older, I am really enjoying it.

Another reviewer put it best for me... "Not too keen at the time, but looking back, a little masterpiece."

And that's exactly how I feel about this. Mind you, I still hate the opening credits and theme song. Just awful, both then and now!

As a youngster, I loved listening to Ronnie Corbett's monologues in 'The Two Ronnies'. This for me was the best bit of the show. He'd be telling an anecdote or a joke and get endlessly sidetracked into other areas of conversation. It was a hilarious and masterful comedy routine. It looked ad-libbed but every utterance was very carefully written and rehearsed.

This series is almost like those monologues as a youthful Ronnie Corbett gets the lions share of the lines and the rest of the cast show up with the intention of sidetracking him from what he wants to do!

The main character is a 41-year-old man still living at home with his domineering mum and submissive father. Although his life hasn't turned out the way he thought it would, he's pretty upbeat about his lot and stumbles onwards and upwards through a series of unoriginal challenges. There's nothing inspirational or groundbreaking about this British comedy... just lots of gentle humor.

If you like Ronnie Corbett or nostalgic British comedy, you could do a lot worse than re-visit this charming program. Would you believe that this program ran for SEVEN years?

Comic gem by the saddly missed Ronnie Corbett. Sharply observed situation comedy based on the adult son Timothy still living at home with the overbearing mother and hen pecked father who frequently retreats to the garden shed . We all know these characters or if we don't , we know someone who does lol .

'Solid and entertaining', yet 3/10? You'll have to explain that one to me. It's true that this is something of a forgotten sitcom, in the sense that it doesn't get talked about and nobody seems to be repeating it. I guarantee, though, that anybody who was around at the time will remember it - language, Timothy!

As a good sitcom should - and like Ronnie Barker's parallel show, Open All Hours - it relies on the strength of its characters and the chemistry of its stars for the comedy, rather than contrived situations as was so common then. The interplay between Timothy and Mother, especially, is magic; and when she slaps him, she really goes for it...

The show does at one point reference Phyllis' somewhat Thatcher-like quality, and - though it probably wasn't the intention - I don't think it's entirely far-fetched to see it as a metaphor for the nation's toxic Mother from Hell, the stifling and manipulative figure from whom Tory boarding school boys still, like Timothy with his mother, can't entirely wean themselves.

There are funnier sitcoms, yes, but few that are more satisfying or so difficult to get tired of. And I have tried.

I saw by chance that one of the writers, Peter Vincent, died recently. He did a bloody good job. RIP.

A great show back then and seems even better today, nice to watch humour and fun without all the vulgarity and swearing that seems to be required these days.A great cast and a simple but great plot, takes you out of the stresses of modern life for half an hour and puts a big smile on your face.This show has stood the test of time even my kids love it. Surely there's life still left in sorry! even more so today with kids staying at home well into their 30's. Although the rest of the cast were brilliant and now sadly incomplete i still think Ronnie Corbett could carry on from where he left off, what a great thought! Would love to know were it was filmed.

The theme tune to 'Sorry!' is quite exceptional. It was originally written for a soap opera about 'Sloane Rangers', the trust funded and upwardly mobile sect of London society that saw fit to dress country style in town and vice-versa. This series didn't make it to our screens but the signature music suited the premise of 'Sorry!' very well as the cyclical nature of the melody is a wonderful illustration of Timothy Lumsden's frustrating life. A slightly reggae influenced rhythm section chugs and pumps away as the melody is played on a sophisticatedly urban sounding electric piano with punctuation from what is either a wah-wah guitar or a synthesizer. The horns are obviously performed by the same musicians that did 'Pigeon Street' and the first 'Only Fools and Horses' theme tune. Ronnie Hazlehurst's typically classy arrangement is a good example of this man's devotion to his work although I don't know if he actually wrote the thing, I expect he did.

The show it's self was a very popular vehicle for Ronnie Corbett and it's interesting mixture of pathos and comedy was typical of the output of the BBC which, at this time, was the greatest television production company that has ever been known.