I come back to Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads from time to time, it sharpens the senses, shows that Le Frenais and Clement understood social mobility and working class mores way before the Tories achieved their undeserved majority from 'Red Wall' seats in 2019, on the shallow basis of 'Levelling Up' and 'Getting Brexit Done'.
One wonders what a latter-day Terry coming out of the army into the North East of England, would think of things now - especially if he bumped into Ant and Dec (Geordies, mind, not from Sunderland).
The impeccable script contains truths that permeate consciousness in a far more measured way than Pinter's 'The Caretaker', for example. In this and in other episodes the somewhat (allegedly) saucy Deidre Birchwood is mentioned and other contemporaries from schooldays, none of whom married Andre Previn - who Terry took to be a bus conductor, at the time, married to Mia Farrow - not from their neck of the woods.
The classic scenes of Bob (Rodney Bewes) social climbing at dinner parties with his fiancé and Terry (James Bolam), an unreconstructed alpha male in unreconstructed times sharing memories of school days, their hostess living above a chip shop, Bob having a caterpillar fall out of his underpants after a fumble with the gardener's daughter, are both hilarious, meaningful and beautifully performed.
Ultimately, Thelma takes Terry's side with a put-down about snobbishness, that would have had me relocating to a flat above a chip shop from semi-detached paradise, it was so cutting.
Sadly, the brilliant writing here, in Hancock, Fawlty Towers, Steptoe, Porridge, One Foot in the Grave, Father Ted and Only Fools and Horses have been superseded by the crass vulgarity of Mrs Brown.
It's worth a journey back to the patterned carpet of the upwardly mobile semi featured in this episode just to see how good comedy can be - and was. A sort of Whatever Happened to Whatever Happened.
One wonders what a latter-day Terry coming out of the army into the North East of England, would think of things now - especially if he bumped into Ant and Dec (Geordies, mind, not from Sunderland).
The impeccable script contains truths that permeate consciousness in a far more measured way than Pinter's 'The Caretaker', for example. In this and in other episodes the somewhat (allegedly) saucy Deidre Birchwood is mentioned and other contemporaries from schooldays, none of whom married Andre Previn - who Terry took to be a bus conductor, at the time, married to Mia Farrow - not from their neck of the woods.
The classic scenes of Bob (Rodney Bewes) social climbing at dinner parties with his fiancé and Terry (James Bolam), an unreconstructed alpha male in unreconstructed times sharing memories of school days, their hostess living above a chip shop, Bob having a caterpillar fall out of his underpants after a fumble with the gardener's daughter, are both hilarious, meaningful and beautifully performed.
Ultimately, Thelma takes Terry's side with a put-down about snobbishness, that would have had me relocating to a flat above a chip shop from semi-detached paradise, it was so cutting.
Sadly, the brilliant writing here, in Hancock, Fawlty Towers, Steptoe, Porridge, One Foot in the Grave, Father Ted and Only Fools and Horses have been superseded by the crass vulgarity of Mrs Brown.
It's worth a journey back to the patterned carpet of the upwardly mobile semi featured in this episode just to see how good comedy can be - and was. A sort of Whatever Happened to Whatever Happened.