Roy Clarke

To me, the main problem with Still Open All Hours was that little attempt was made to modernise the show for a 21st century audience. Whilst there's nothing wrong with having a traditional sitcom like this on the TV, it did feel that Roy Clarke used the majority of an old script that he had lying around and just changed the names to suit the new characters.

Even the contemporary character of Leroy feels dated, with the jokes about him wearing sunglasses indoors feeling incredibly clichéd. Though I understand why Still Open All Hours needed a nostalgic touch, I think Clarke would've been best hiring a younger co-writer who would've helped update the show so it didn't feel like it was stuck in the past. Indeed if the show was to receive a new series, and judging from the ratings then that's a real possibility, I would hope that a new writer would be brought on board to assist Clarke.

While nostalgia may work for a one-off special, I feel a full series of episodes such as this one wouldn't work and would instead be a massive flop. But I for one would leave things as they were and have Still Open All Hours simply be a one-off special rather than a pilot for a whole new run which would probably tarnish the legacy of one of our country's best sitcoms.

There's a hairdresser's shop in Balby, Doncaster, which hasn't had this much attention in 28 years. After the BBC's set dressers have done their thing, it becomes Arkwright's grocers, now the domain of Granville and his brown coat.

This documentary explores the appeal of the original Open All Hours - complete, of course, with the curmudgeonly shopkeeper of yore -and the process of making yesterday's Christmas revival without him. Interviews with David Jason, Lynda Baron and writer Roy Clarke hint at the mood on set, which must be bittersweet without Barker. Judging by the window displays, however, things have moved on for the small shopkeeper.

Still Open All Hours review

Still Open All Hours wasn't quite the car crash I anticipated but neither was it the triumphant return to form that I think Roy Clarke and David Jason imagined it to be.

There are very few British sitcoms more beloved than Open All Hours, a slice of comic northern life as comforting as warm Yorkshire parkin.

Of course Ronnie Barker, who added grumpy, low-level-swindling shopkeeper Albert Arkwright to his portmanteau of great comedy characters, is no longer with us. But David Jason, his put-upon nephew and protégé Granville, has become an all-conquering TV star in the years since Open All Hours ended in 1985 and he returns to that little corner shop as its new owner.

He's helped by his son Leroy (Emmerdale's James Baxter), the result of a one-night stand 25 years ago - a handsome, ambitious lad who fights off female attention very much as Granville used to back in the old days.

This special episode, written by Open All Hours creator Roy Clarke, takes us back to the shop for a day, and reintroduces us to some familiar faces.

Still Open All Hours, BBC One, review

This one-off revival of Roy Clarke's much-loved sitcom felt like a sad relic from another era, says Ben Lawrence.

James Kirk discusses his comedy hero, Roy Clarke

The young Scottish comic has a fond place in his heart for the Last of the Summer Wine writer.

Poet Ian McMillan pays tribute to the pastoral sitcom that ends this evening on BBC1. Most of its long-standing characters have moved on to that tin bath in the sky, but Summer Wine has managed to carry on regardless until the axe fell in 2010. The line-up changed but that didn't stop the wry philosophising and gags about battleaxes and weak-willed men in episodes that still attract a respectable four million viewers. Here, McMillan ventures behind the scenes with writer Roy Clarke (scribe of all 295 instalments) and gets to chat with present cast members. There's also archive interview footage of the late Bill Owen and Kathy Staff, who provided many fondly remembered moments (most of which involved buckets of water, ladders and broom handles) as welly-wearing Compo and wrinkly-stockinged Nora Batty.

Ever since its debut in 1973, Roy Clarke's genial sitcom has revolved around henpecked husbands and embittered wives, so it's only fitting that the climax should concern itself with a wedding. The occasion allows for a gathering of the major characters including - through the use of some canny editing - Truly and Clegg, both of whom have rarely been seen outside of their homes of late. Plus we also get a resolution to the saga of Howard and Pearl, whose marital strife has dominated this last run of episodes. But as a series finale, it lacks the required sense of poignancy, mainly because it wasn't known for sure at the time of filming that there were to be no further outings. And Summer Wine can do touching when required - long-standing devotees will recall Compo's funeral and the trip to Dunkirk, for instance. These are the fans who'll be left wishing Clarke had been given the opportunity to pen a more fitting send-off.

It's the end of an era, as the cork comes out of the bottle of Britain's longest-running sitcom for the last time. Roy Clarke's beloved tales of a group of hapless old men in a West Yorkshire village first appeared on our screens in 1973, but the show has gone on to carve a host of indelible characters, such as Bill Owen's Compo and Kathy Staff's Nora Batty, onto the television landscape. Tonight, Howard (Robert Fyfe) despairs of being allowed back into the marital home to retrieve his wedding suit.

Once more the BBC salutes itself. Honestly, if they had to pay for the airtime to promote themselves, as they do constantly, the bill would be enormous. Here's ubiquitous Ian McMillan with a tribute to the longest-running sitcom in TV history as it reaches its final episode. Who'd have thought a comedy about three old men in rural Yorkshire could last so long, win so many hearts (if not mine) and make its corner of the Dales a tourist destination? Perhaps not even writer Roy Clarke and producer/director Alan JW Bell although their casting of the three originals, especially that of wonderful Peter Sallis and the late Bill Owen, was a masterstroke.