Ronnie Barker returns as Norman Stanley Fletcher, fresh out of Slade Prison and determined to keep his nose clean in a world that keeps tempting him back. The BBC sitcom picks up exactly where Porridge left off, only now the laughs come from watching Fletcher wrestle with minimum-wage jobs, suspicious landlords and the horrors of honest toil. Richard Beckinsale tags along as Lennie Godber, still wide-eyed and now engaged to Fletcher’s daughter Ingrid, played by Patricia Brake, while a baby-faced Nicholas Lyndhurst completes the family as Fletcher’s son Raymond. Six episodes, broadcast between February and April 1978, offered a compressed but perfectly formed chronicle of one man’s struggle against his own nature. Writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais kept the dialogue tight, the pathos just below the surface, and the catchphrases coming. Over 15 million people tuned in each week, the series won the 1979 BAFTA for Best Situation Comedy, and Radio Times put Barker on the cover. Plans for more episodes died with Beckinsale in March 1979, though Barker had only ever committed to one run anyway. The theme tune, sung by Barker himself, was released as a single; the B-side was called “The String Bean Queen”. Six half-hours proved enough to seal the character’s fate as the lovable rogue who almost, but not quite, went straight.
Production Details
BBC One / 1 Season / 6 Episodes / 1978
Created by: Ian La Frenais, Dick Clement
Writer(s): Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais
Producer(s): Sydney Lotterby
Main Cast
Ronnie Barker as Norman Stanley Fletcher
Patricia Brake as Ingrid Fletcher
Richard Beckinsale as Lenny Godber
Nicholas Lyndhurst as Raymond Fletcher
David Swift as Mr McEwan
Rowena Cooper as Shirley Chapman
Timothy Bateson as Oaksey
Pete Postlethwaite as Thomas Clifford Crowther
Alfred Lynch as Dave Pipers
Roberta Tovey as Penny
Elizabeth Cassidy as Pamela
Fulton Mackay as Mr. Mackay
