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LWT PROGRAMMES |  |
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LWT COMEDY
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London
Weekend's first ever programme, We Have Ways of Making You Laugh,
hosted by Frank Muir, was blacked out by an industrial dispute 15 seconds
after the station went on air for the first time. On The Buses
was the station's first really popular comedy series, earning high viewing
figures across the network and a subsequent long run.
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A
rare ITV outing for Ronnie Barker in London Weekend's 1968 comedy Hark
at Barker. John Alderton was the long-suffering hip young teacher
in the highly popular Please Sir! which ran from 1969 until 1975.
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Curry and Chips - written by Alf Garnett creator Johnny Speight and starring Spike Milligan, Kenny Lynch and Eric Sykes - was LWT's first colour production in 1969. Set in a factory canteen, the intention was to highlight racial discrimination, but the Independent Television Authority felt the show to be racist and forced LWT to take it off the air. Mind Your Language, screened from 1977 to 1981, and written by Vince Powell, was set in a language class. The light-hearted series was accused of promoting racial stereotypes and was cancelled by Michael Grade when he became programme controller at LWT. An independent production company revived it for a brief run on ITV in 1986. |
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Doctor
At Large was a ratings-banker for London Weekend in the early 1970s
and The Fosters, 1974-1978, featured a young Lenny Henry, fresh
from talent show success, in its cast.
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LWT
bought the rights to The Goodies which had enjoyed a long run on
the BBC in the 70s, but the move backfired when the true implications
of the very high production expenses became apparent. Whoops Apocalypse
was a highly entertaining cold war satire charting the events leading
up to a notional Third World War. It should be repeated!
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A
Fine Romance, with Judi Dench and Michael Williams, was an award-winning
comedy for LWT between 1980 and 1984. Maureen Lipman was the star of Agony
from 1979, where she starred as a magazine and local radio agony aunt
who had to cope with a complex family life herself.
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Two
LWT outings for Nicholas Lyndhurst, first in The Piglet Files,
by Colin Bostock-Smith, and secondly in the popular mid-1980s yuppie drama,
The Two Of Us, which dealt with an upwardly mobile young city couple
and the trials and tribulations of setting up home together. Cannon
and Ball got big audiences with their comedy double act in the early
to mid 80s.
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Richard
O' Sullivan starred in the early and mid-1980s situation comedy Me
and My Girl which enjoyed a long run into the 90s. Emma Ridley played
the daughter and Joan Sanderson, of Please Sir fame, played the marvellous
battleaxe of a mother-in-law. Faith in the Future starred Lynda
Bellingham and Julia Sawahla as mother and daughter.
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Hale
and Pace kept many of us chuckling during Sunday nights from the late
80s to the mid 90s and James Bolam and Lynda Bellingham got together in
Second Thoughts, a traditional sitcom format from LWT.
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| Other successful comedies from London Weekend Television included: the zany and rather clever part-networked skit on contemporary television, End of Part One. |
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