Not as good as Porridge but.... (Open All Hours)

Member Name: mikeb

Product:	Open All Hours
Date:	12/06/01 (386 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great performances by cast, funny by todays standards, for all ages

Disadvantages: Not side splitting stuff, not a great deal of action

Yet another fine comedy series starring Ronnie Barker which may not be quite up to the standard of Porridge but is still better than most of the current crop of sitcoms.

The series is currently being repeated on UK Gold on a Saturday evening with three episodes being shown back to back. Ronnie Barker stars as the stuttering corner shop owner Arkwright who’s main aims in life are to fleece the customers out of as much money as possible and get closer to his fiancee, the buxom nurse Glagys Emmanuel, played by Lynda Baron. He is assisted in the shop by Granville who acts as errand boy and all round dogsbody. Granville is played by that other great comic actor David Jason and is treated like a teenager by Arkwright despite the fact that he must have been well into his thirties when the programme was made in the early eighties. Both the main actors show how versatile they are with their fine portrayal of these two characters.

When the show was first screened on BBC1, to high ratings, there was a fair bit of publicity about Arkwrights stuttering, which is used to great comic effect. It was suggested that Barker’s character was taking the mickey out of people who had the problem in real life but in my view this is a bit like saying that John Cleese doing his silly walk in Monty Python is offensive to people who have trouble walking. The stuttering is so obviously over the top and for comic purposes that it is difficult to see how anyone could take offense.

The series was written by Roy Clarke and the scripts were always entertaining if not side splitting stuff. Although it was obviously set in modern times judging by the cars parked in the street but the shop and surrounding area always has the feel of a bygone era. There is rarely much of a storyline to the show with much of the action taking place in the shop itself and most of the laughs coming from the interplay between the main characters and the shoppers, some of whom became re
gulars. These included Kathy Staff – Nora Batty in Last of the summer wine. It is a surprise to me that Open all hours writer Roy Clarke is also responsible for Summer wine, a series I now find deeply unfunny and a show that has gone on for far too many years now. It had a certain novelty value for the first couple of series but has gone downhill since, in my view.

Open all hours is certainly not the best thing Ronnie Barker or David Jason have done but is definately worth watching again when compared to some of todays comedy efforts.

Summary: