Pay and Display

This short lived comedy ran for one series in the summer of 2000. Coming out at a time when British television comedy was churning out ground breaking series such as The Office and The Royale Family, Pay and Display looked very old fashioned and dated. James Bolam who of course was in the excellent The Likely Lads and its even better sequel, Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads, looks somewhat bored in his role as the main character Sid. Sid is written rather like a second rate Victor Meldrew. He is constantly at odds with his young assistant, and its from their relationship that the comedy comes. This premise for the series is hardly original, indeed Steptoe and Son did the same 40 years earlier. Pay and Display has never been repeated since its run,

I have this on VHS from when it was broadcast at 8:30pm on ITV at some point in July 2000 and I find it to be a fun harmless 3 hours of british sitcom hunour. 6 25 minute episodes were transmitted which was and is the norm for UK TV sitcoms. Featuring James Bolam in the starring role as Sid he plays off against the younger Danny played by Matt Bardock who went on to star in A Touch of Frost with David Jason. The series is set in the office of a car park with most of the dialogue occuring between just the two main characters with the odd appearance by car park owner Miss Cummings played by the mistress-esque Diana Weston and Traffic Warden Adolf played by Pearce Quigley. I don't think this has ever seen a dvd release and I haven't found it on any streaming platform as of yet so I'll have to settle for the low quality tv taped version I have, its just a shame that the production company haven't released it if they still exist.