Free Last of The Summer Wine by Richard Webber Page A

play secondary characters or guests roles turned out well-honed performances.
    But where Summer Wine scored extra marks is in its delicious setting. Yes, the Pennines, in the heart of Yorkshire, can be rugged, bleak and, as the performers often discovered, exceedingly chilly. But the greenery and fine curves of the rolling landscape provided a wonderful backdrop to the show.
    To unearth the origins of the sitcom, we have to travel back nearly four decades to that Comedy Playhouse offering in the depths of winter 1973. Pioneering Duncan Wood, the then Head of Comedy at the BBC, who’d produced such shows as Hancock’s Half-Hour and The World of Beachcomber , had seen Roy Clarke’s comedy drama The Misfit , which between 1970 and 1971 ran to two series on ATV; he regarded the writer as the right man to pen a pilot script he had in mind, even though Roy had established himself, primarily, as a writer of drama.
    The premise for the half-hour script centred around the daily goings-on in the lives of three elderly men—not that much happened; for them, it was about trying to fill their very long days with something to occupy their ageing minds, although they fought tooth-and-nail against the onset of old age. For a while, Roy Clarke struggled with the concept and was on the verge of declining the chance to write the pilot script; but then he found a solution to his predicament: by treating the three centralcharacters like juveniles, with carefree attitudes and a sense of freedom akin to the years of adolescence, he created plenty of opportunities to inject humour into the script.
    Everything clicked. Roy Clarke delivered a script which was shown as a pilot programme, a well-proven way of discovering which comedy ideas had the legs to become a full-blown series. The pilot, ‘Of Funerals And Fish’, was transmitted on that January evening and before long a series was commissioned. The first of six episodes, ‘Short Back And Palais Glide’, was screened in November 1973.
    ‘W E’VE REALLY CRACKED IT THIS TIME. ’ (H OWARD )
    For a time, it looked as if the series would be called The Library Mob , despite Roy’s provisional title being Last of the Summer Wine . Thankfully, BBC executives saw sense and opted for the writer’s suggestion, which in its way symbolised the sitcom’s style and format. Here, three men were reaching the twilight of their lives, despite what they may have wanted to believe, so savouring the final drops of life to the full, like you would a fine wine, were of paramount importance.
    Roy Clarke’s title conjures up images of rurality, too, and this aspect of the programme was an integral part of its success and longevity. For me, like millions of other fans, the characters’regular wandering on the hills, far beyond the clatter and noise of civilisation, was a crucial element—a form of escapism. It’s a well-known fact that much of the filming takes place in and around Holmfirth, a small West Yorkshire town situated in the Holme Valley. Six miles south of Huddersfield, the town grew up around a corn mill and bridge in the thirteenth century, and has now been placed firmly on the tourist map, thanks to Summer Wine . The location was suggested by the late Barry Took, who’d filmed a half-hour instalment of a BBC documentary series close to the town; aware that Duncan Wood was shooting a Yorkshire-based comedy pilot, he recommended they take a look at Holmfirth.
    The central trio of characters, beginning with Bill ‘Compo’ Simonite, Norman Clegg and Cyril Blamire, were written as old
    D ID YOU KNOW?
    Peter Sallis, who’ll forever be linked with the wonderful Norman Clegg, found himself cast as his own father in Roy Clarke’s First of the Summer Wine .

    friends, creating an instant bond between them and affording Roy the chance to exploit their long-held friendships for comedy purposes.
    When casting the lead roles, one actor was top of the list to fill the shoes of Norman Clegg. Peter Sallis