When My Family -- which I've just started watching beginning-to-end right now was cancelled earlier this year, I read that it was one of just 12 British sitcoms to reach 100 episodes.
I'm guessing Last of the Summer Wine may be among that number. What are the others?
Thanks.
Assuming you're referring to television only, here's what we record at the moment.
Last Of The Summer Wine, 31 series, 295 episodes
ChuckleVision, 21, 293
The Army Game, 4, 154
Bodger And Badger, 9, 126
Mike & Angelo, 12, 123
My Family, 11, 119
The Dickie Henderson Show, 9, 116
My Parents Are Aliens, 8, 106
Bootsie And Snudge, 4, 104
Birds Of A Feather, 9, 102
(I say 'at the moment' as our database is incomplete; although we prioritised collecting up those long-running shows for stats for something else a few years ago, it's still vaguely outside-chance possible something obscure has been overlooked.)
Wow that Army Game stat is impressive!
It is indeed. 39, 39, 36 and 39 episodes.
Quote: Aaron @ October 29 2011, 10:01 PM BSTLast Of The Summer Wine, 31 series, 295 episodes
ChuckleVision, 21, 293
The Army Game, 4, 154
Bodger And Badger, 9, 126
Mike & Angelo, 12, 123
My Family, 11, 119
The Dickie Henderson Show, 9, 116
My Parents Are Aliens, 8, 106
Bootsie And Snudge, 4, 104
Birds Of A Feather, 9, 102
Of those I think I've only ever seen Last Of The Summer Wine, My Family and Birds Of A Feather.
Quote: Aaron @ October 29 2011, 10:01 PM BSTBootsie And Snudge, 4, 104
Bootsie and Snudge was about a bootboy and a footman in a Gentleman's Club, the sequel to the Army Game with Alfie Bass and Bill Fraser, also featuring Clive Dunn. It was written by Barry Took and Marty Feldman, amongst others. Although 104 episodes were made, a lot were done on a shoestring-only regular cast.
It's startling that, like Chappers, I've only seen LOSW, My Family and Birds of a Feather. More, I've only heard of a couple of the others.
It will be interesting to check out the others. I think I know that Army Game is on DVD but don't know about the rest.
Thanks!
Quote: Chappers @ October 29 2011, 10:09 PM BSTOf those I think I've only ever seen Last Of The Summer Wine, My Family and Birds Of A Feather.
Several of the others are actually shows from childrens television, which would probably explain why they had passed you by.
Quote: Rose2010 @ October 30 2011, 12:54 PM BSTIt's startling that, like Chappers, I've only seen LOSW, My Family and Birds of a Feather. More, I've only heard of a couple of the others.
It will be interesting to check out the others. I think I know that Army Game is on DVD but don't know about the rest.
Thanks!
Yes, all 50 surviving episodes of The Army Game are available on DVD. The first series of Bootsie And Snudge, its spin-off, is available, but only until mid-December.
See Amazon product listing
[p=http://www.play.com/DVD/DVD/-/55/70/-/5889375/The-Army-Game-Complete-Series-Boxset/Product.html]
[h=830541]
Only two or three episodes of The Dickie Henderson Show survive, so that's not been released and likely never will be. Notably its key writers were Jeremy Lloyd and Jimmy Grafton, the comedy writer publican in whose premises The Goons were formed.
ChuckleVision, Bodger And Badger, Mike & Angelo and My Parents Are Aliens are all kids' sitcoms, and (perhaps aside from a couple of VHS highlights collections in the 90s) to the best of my knowledge, nothing of any of them has ever been made commercially available. I think it's safe to say that all episodes of them are available, but not even from normal places. I imagine you could get quite a good taster from YouTube however.
Quote: Matthew Stott @ October 30 2011, 12:59 PM BSTSeveral of the others are actually shows from childrens television, which would probably explain why they had passed you by.
And the rest are ITV things from when I was young so never bothered with them.
I should probably point out that some people consider the series Sykes And A... and Sykes to be one and the same. If so, they would jump up to fourth place in that list, having a combined run of 128 episodes over 16 series.
The difference between the two is almost the same as the difference between Terry & June and Happy Ever After, so we'd have to count that in too, with a combined run of 14 series and 106 episodes.
So let's not go down that messy route.
Having grown up with American television, I'm accustomed to "spin-offs" but I think the examples you've cited aren't quite the same thing.... more like "continuations" from what I know.
In thinking about spin-offs, I can only think of one American example of a sitcom "spinning off" into a drama: Mary Tyler Moore into Lou Grant. Any Britcoms result in dramas? Or is that a subject for a different thread?
It is really, but it'd be a very short one. The closest I can think of is the soap opera Coronation Street, which in its early days fostered Pardon The Expression, which in turn had a sequel in Turn Out The Lights. There are certainly sitcoms that have tread a line between genres themselves, and sketch shows that have fostered sitcoms (The Fast Show - Swiss Toni), but I can't think of any with direct spin-offs into other genres.
(It's worth pointing out though that Coronation Street was a barely-disguised sitcom in its early years. Principal writers included sitcom supremos Vince Powell and Harry Driver, creators of Bless This House, Nearest And Dearest, and many more. Sitcom writers do still pen for the show - Jonathan Harvey of Gimme Gimme Gimme is/was a writer very recently.)
On the spin-off/continuation thing, the Sykes and Terry & June series were slight shifts in the show's central premise, in order to foster a new life and new set of plots for the characters. The character traits are all but identical, and the cast are equally barely-changed, but their initial situation differs slightly in a number of ways.
You could also argue that Only Fools and Horses and its various spin-offs lead to over 100 episodes. According to the guide, Only Fools and Horses had 66 episodes, The Green Green Grass had 32 episodes, and Rock & Chips had 3, which totals 101.
That surprises me that OFAH had only 66 yet GGG had almost half as many.