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?

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.

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 .

This is a television comedy programme that I missed seeing when it was originally broadcast and, I somehow managed to catch up with occasional episodes very much in retrospect, my son got me Series 1 and 2 on DVD and I am dipping into now rather like pot luck.

The curious thing for about this show above all others on the box is the conversation I had with my brother Murray in relation to British comedy shows, as he lives in Australia and I had no idea which ones he may have seen. The funny thing is that he happened to watch an episode of it with our mum, and he remarked to her that Timothy Lumsden's mother reminded him of her. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall to see her reaction and I just had to ask what she had replied, according to Murray she simply smiled, she must have been absolutely mortified at his cheek in mentioning this.

I would not describe Timothy's dad as merely henpecked no the way I prefer to describe home as more akin to someone who has, somehow miraculously survived the First World War and has finally returned from the front line trenches. No what he suffers from is shell shock that is why he appears to exist in a permanent daze, because he is in perpetual survival mode as the only way of, hoping to cope with his lot in life.

Timothy has been effectively lobotomised by his overbearing mother such that, he feels the perpetual need to apologise to her even when, she has outdone her own mean spirited endeavours to control his every waking moment.

Re-watching the first episode it's rather like deja vu with my mum in comparing her with Timothy's mother, mum was not a bit like that when I was a kid happily enough I rather enjoyed my childhood. No the transformation somehow occurred much later in her life, when both Murray and I had long since flown the nest. What made me make any comparison between my mum and Timothy's, was the way mum insisted on cooking meals. Such that Murray seemed content to survive purely on a diet of confectionary, from the local cake shop rather than suffer her dinners.

This was one of my favourite sitcoms during the 1980s.

Timothy Lumsden is played by the irrefutible Ronnie Corbett. Is a man in his early 40s living at home with his parents.

I know it's hard to believe but poor old Tim can't leave the qualities of home his inescapable mind isconstantly under the influence of his mother, played by Barbara Lott who plays the part so brilliantly. She was made for the part. I Loved her character immenseley.

William Moore plays the father, who is also under her spell. He's number three in the show and often helps the hilarity of the show.

As the series progressed I always rooted for Timothy to find true love as he did try but somehow couldn't get away.