Butterflies

Carla's decades of comedy

It's a little more than 30 years since Liverpool's most well-known comedy jewel first came to our screens.

It followed the working class Boswell family struggling through the city's high unemployment and poor prospects in the late 1980s, painting a bleak yet concurrently warm and hopeful picture of life in one of Britain's major cities.

Profile: Butterflies, 1978

Despite it's age, this still stands out as very funny, even today.

In what looks decidedly like a sod-it capitulation to the bigger networks, Channel 5 continues its retro repeats. First, that means Frank Spencer trying to pass his driving test. Rubbish in 1975, still rubbish now. Far better is Butterflies (9pm) from 1979, Carla Lane's bittersweet dissection of middle-class life, at its best like a Margaret Drabble novel played for laughs. Finally, there's an episode of Terry and June (9.45pm), nominally from 1982 but actually existing in its own timeless suburban realm of double entendres and cheesy gags. That's not a criticism, by the way.

BBC pitches Butterflies to US market

Corporation dusts down classic sitcoms as part of a BBC Worldwide campaign.