When Ant & Dec remade The Likely Lads
Published: Sunday 4th September 2022
Remakes are a funny business. Unfortunately, that's usually funny in the weird sense. Many attempts have been made to 'Americanise' great British sitcoms and a great deal of them have been met with total disaster. Notwithstanding, to dare to cover a comedy classic is one of the bravest things an actor - or indeed, a writer - can take on. A remake of a home-grown sitcom has only happened a handful of times, but one of particular interest occurred in 2002 when Ant & Dec stepped into the shoes of the Likely Lads.
The Likely Lads was a sitcom sensation, achieving unbelievable viewing figures of up to 27 million. James Bolam and Rodney Bewes played two working class Geordies, Terry and Bob, old childhood friends who had stuck together through thick and thin. Bob was a hopeful soul, whilst Terry took a more pessimistic approach to life. Together they made a relatable pair to the millions watching, and for the writing duo, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais (who would later become sitcom writing legends, most notable for the classic Ronnie Barker series Porridge) the original Likely Lads (filmed in black and white for the BBC) was their first major hit.
The series was easily as popular and as culturally significant as Only Fools And Horses at its peak, and was succeeded by an even more popular and critically acclaimed sequel, Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?. A continuation of the original black and white 1960s series titled simply Likely Lads, it built upon its predecessor's success and amplified it tenfold.
The first sitcom ever aired on BBC2 in its birth year - 1964 - only ten of the twenty Likely Lads episodes made have survived due to the era's widespread but lamentable industry practice of wiping tapes to make space for more programmes and save money on film. The colour sequel, however, came later enough - and drew enough acclaim - to survive in its entirety.
The two incarnations of the series hail from a golden era of British sitcom that has achieved an almost God-like status amongst comedy connoisseurs. Much like Paul Merton's Hancock remakes of the mid-nineties, the initial pitch to remake these episodes - these classic yardsticks of British sitcom - was, and often still is, met with disbelief and even outrage. Although produced with good intentions, all such remakes have been widely considered an afront to the originals; indeed some people regard them as an outright offence, an abomination.
It is basic human instinct to see somebody else performing much-loved original material and think that they're trying to overwrite a classic. To date, only the remakes of lost sitcom episodes - such as Dad's Army - have been met with a warm response. Revisiting a sitcom isn't the same as covering a song, or performing a play. When Ant & Dec revealed that they were going to be taking on The Likely Lads the question almost certainly would have been 'who do they think they are, stepping into the world of British comedy? Do they think they can turn up and just be the Likely Lads?'.
Although you could be forgiven for missing it, the child actors turned pop stars turned presenting duo, Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly have always dipped their toes into the world of classic comedy. They have worked, and continue to collaborate with many successful comedy writers, including David Walliams and the Dawson Brothers, but one of their most intriguing writing partnerships was with the late, great Eddie Braben.
Braben, one of the few comedy writers to be the subject of his own biopic, was known as 'the third man behind the success of The Morecambe And Wise Show'. He wrote some of their most famous sketches, including the evergreen line: "I'm playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order". For him to be writing for Ant & Dec in the early 2000s (albeit for their short-lived Channel 4 series, Ant And Dec Unzipped) was quite the coup, and it came shortly after what could be considered the Geordie duo's creative peak.
The duo started out as child stars in the BBC's Grange Hill-esque northern teen-drama Byker Grove; but it was in presenting the anarchic Saturday Morning kids' music series, SMTV Live (alongside Cat Deeley) that Ant & Dec really launched themselves as a legitimate comedy double act. For a particular generation of '90s kids (and some adults) the show remains iconic.
Fellow presenter Stephen Mulhern described SMTV Live as the last kids' TV series that wasn't 'safe'. The approach that producers took simply refused to patronise or talk down to their audience in any way. Dec would scream down the camera if young callers happened to suggest answers that didn't rhyme, in the show's regular feature, Wonky Donkey. Choruses of 'You're thick, you're thick, you're thick, you're thick, you are, you're thick!' were encouraged from the children if Ant lost in his Challenge Ant segment. It was organised chaos, and as the show became a hit, the writers (Ben Ward, Dean Wilkinson and Gez Foster) seemed to get away with murder. The material quickly became less childlike and more adult. Famously, one recurring sketch saw Ant & Dec play two fighter pilots in period costume:
Dec: So, there I was no. 2, in this unbearable heat. I was so hot and sweaty I had to strip to my waist. Yes, my war paint was literally running off me. There were men attacking me from all sides! At one point, I had to fight them off with my bare hands!
Ant: Ohh... and where is this club, do you say?
Dec: Soho.
Top guests clambered to be on the show, and by the end it became essential watching for almost every age demographic. It was a phenomenon. And the sheer exuberance that poured out of the screen seemed to inspire a loyalty to Ant & Dec that still endures to this day.
With their star power far outstripping the confines of Saturday morning television, it seemed the duo could go on to do anything they wanted. So, when they quit SMTV in 2001, crossing over into the 'grown-up' world of UK sitcom appeared to be a logical move.
Which brings us onto Likely Lads, as the following year saw the pair become a Terry and a Bob reimagined for the 21st Century: they were recreating and updating the perennial classic episode, No Hiding Place.
The original was broadcast in 1973, the seventh of the first series of sequel Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?. In the programme, we see the lads bet they can go the entire day without hearing the football results in order to properly enjoy watching the game when it's broadcast on television later that evening.
Broadcast in 1966, the final episode of the earlier series saw the two friends part as Terry headed off into the British Army whilst Bob was rejected and forced to stay behind and attempt to make a life for himself in Newcastle. Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? saw Terry return from the military, divorced and jaded, while Bob had retained most of his youthful optimism and was, at last, doing reasonably well for himself.
So, what could Ant & Dec bring to these roles? The script itself is almost identical to Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais's original, with only minor details updated and a few pop culture references switched. The opening scene sees the stars rock up at the world's least convincing coffee shop exterior, where the petulant Terry (Ant) complains at length about the fact that you can't get a normal cup of tea anymore thanks to the rise of these trendy new coffee establishments. The original saw the lads turn up at a barbers', but the essence of the humour remains the same. John Thomson completed the core cast as the bothersome Flint, who appears throughout to antagonise the pair - it was Brian Glover in the original.
The big problem with this special was that Ant & Dec were just too young for the roles at the time. They might have been alright remaking a lost episode of Likely Lads, which found Bob and Terry on the cusp of their twenties, but Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? (which caught up with the friends some seven years later) had a certain melancholy in wasted youth. You only have to hear those famous lyrics to the theme song:
Oh, what happened to you?
Whatever happened to me?
What became of the people we used to be?
But Ant & Dec were clearly not that old: not in appearance and certainly not in spirit. There was no chance of convincing the audience that their best days were behind them. So when we hear things lines such as Dec's frequent "you have been away for a long time" it feels somewhat unconvincing. The fact that you can compare performances, scene by scene, was also a tough ask for the pair. However, a church sequence shows the newcomers at their best: it is here they hit their stride and relax into the roles, particularly when they play I-spy to pass the time. The line: "I didn't know it was I-spy with my ex-ray eye!" actually elicits a stronger reaction from the studio audience than in the original.
Whilst their ages don't feel right, it has to be said that Ant & Dec do suit the roles otherwise, almost to perfection - they certainly couldn't have changed who played who. Dec has an undeniable air of Rodney Bewes about him. Bewes himself was happy to endorse this project, turning up for a brief cameo as the newspaper seller that Bob and Terry duck to avoid, just as they did in the original. But, even if the world's greatest Bewes and Bolam impersonators had stepped up to give it a try, and they had performed it with a precision identical to the original performances in every single way - heck, even going so far as to have plastic surgery to look exactly like Rodney Bewes and James Bolam circa 1973 - this tribute would still have been met with scepticism... because ultimately, why not just watch the original episode?
Dec would later reflect:
To put it mildly, The Likely Lads is an institution in Newcastle. When we announced we were doing it, the reaction from our fellow Geordies was simple and straightforward: they all said, 'we can't think of two better lads to do it, but, whatever you do, make sure you don't mess it up'. Well, 'mess it up' wasn't the exact phrase they used, but you get the drift.
It received mixed reviews, but the people who really mattered to us - the people of Newcastle - said nice things. And as long as our fellow Geordies were happy, then we could rest easy.
Was this a pitch for a full series? Well, not really. It was billed as A Tribute To The Likely Lads, and the football episode may have been selected to tie in with the same year's World Cup (for which Ant & Dec also released a novelty song). In many ways it was a pity that they didn't go for one of the many lost episodes, or just a vaguely Likely Lads-inspired sitcom pilot that didn't loudly announce itself as a remake of The Likely Lads. The staying power these old sitcoms have with audiences and the way they are beloved and treasured by viewers really shouldn't be underestimated.
But if Ant & Dec had carried on, would it have brought The Likely Lads to a new audience? Could Rodney Bewes have got involved a bit more? Could Ant & Dec have become bona fide sitcom stars? This was a crossroads for them, but off the back of their successful stint presenting Pop Idol, the pair ultimately chose another path. And although they didn't head down the sitcom route, they still make references to classic comedy; their allusions to The Morecambe And Wise Show in the entertainment series Saturday Night Takeaway are frequent and sometimes obvious.
They invite Stephen Mulhern onto their shows with a rehearsed reluctance that invokes Morecambe & Wise's famous banter with Des O'Connor. They even had a vague go at remaking the breakfast sketch (but then, even Armstrong & Miller couldn't resist the urge to try that). They sing and dance around with just a whiff of The Two Ronnies. It seems that Ant & Dec do still hanker for the world of 70s light entertainment - a world in which Morecambe & Wise ruled supreme and that writers such as Eddie Braben made iconic.
Ultimately, it's easy to sneer at a remake, but whatever your views on whether such a venture should ever be attempted, Ant & Dec's brief foray into the world of sitcom wasn't without merit and remains a fascinating little curio in the endlessly interesting world of British comedy history.
When Rodney Bewes passed away in 2017, Ant & Dec said he was "a fine comic actor who we had the honour of meeting and working with. He will live on through Bob Ferris and the brilliant Likely Lads."
You might disagree with the remake, but you couldn't disagree with that. Watch the full programme below.
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Love comedy? Find out moreThe Likely Lads Collection
This 6 disc box set contains all 27 episodes of classic sitcom Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?, and the 8 surviving episodes of its predecessor, The Likely Lads, including one never previously released on DVD.
Entente Cordiale
Double Date
Older Women Are More Experienced
The Suitor
The Last Of The Big Spenders
Rocker
Goodbye To All That
The Other Side Of The Fence
This classic comedy series stars Rodney Bewes and James Bolam as Geordies Terry Collier and Bob Ferris.
First released: Monday 16th October 2006
DVD- Distributor: 2 Entertain
- Region: 2 & 4
- Discs: 6
- Minutes: 972
- Subtitles: English
- Catalogue: BBCDVD2110
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The Likely Lads
Spinning off from the incredibly popular 1960s sitcom and its BAFTA-winning 1970s sequel, James Bolam and Rodney Bewes star as Terry Collier and Bob Ferris, two life-long friends with vastly different outlooks on life! Written by comedy legends Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais - who would go on to further success with series like Porridge and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet - The Likely Lads is presented here as a brand-new high definition transfer from the original film elements in its original theatrical aspect ratio.
Thelma's continued annoyance at her husband Bob's disruptive friend shows no sign of abating. But when Terry lands himself a new girlfriend Thelma sees her chance to finally get Terry married off and out of her and Bob's life forever! Her solution of touring the north of England in a caravan, however, leaves a lot to be desired...
First released: Monday 1st April 2019
Blu-ray DVD- Distributor: Network
- Region: B
- Discs: 1
- Minutes: 90
- Subtitles: English
- Catalogue: 7958111
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- Distributor: Network
- Region: 2
- Discs: 1
- Minutes: 86
- Subtitles: English
- Catalogue: 7954728
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Search for this product on eBay
BCG may earn commission on sales generated through the links above.