Did the show become less British with Season Three?

that could be, all we got here in my part of the US was the second series of Foggy and that looped for years. Finally that expanded and I have watched the full series many times. I enjoy it from the first series of Foggy on through to the end. I thought the second series of Foggy just had such a good chemistry..
 
Thanks for all the responses.
In a sense enjoying the third man that was there when one first watched the series reminds me of another classic though very different British series Classic Doctor Who. For many of us in America, me included, it was the third and fourth Doctors we knew and felt at home watching. Similarly I bought the Last of the Summer wine DVDs on a rare BBC sale at my local bookstore and they started with Season Three. So younger Foggy was my first third man and I tend to like, what was it, seasons 4 to 8 the best. Seymour was enjoyable as well though Foggy's return was quite enjoyable. So Foggy's first years through the end of the return of Foggy years is what I tend to think of as the prime years of Last of the Summer wine.
Blamire came much later and was more difficult to understand and while I liked Frank Thornton on Are You Being Served I didn't quite warm to him as the third man. Maybe I just need to give him another view?
 
Thank you mashibinbin.

You make some very interesting observations. I wrote something of a book on 1950s US sitcoms and I'm moving toward another on the 1960s, currently watching a lot of Andy Griffith. Over here I can see the times changing notably escapism followed by then reality as the 1960s gave way to the 1970s and the Americanization of those shows Norman Lear borrowed from you along with MASH. Followed by a return to 1950s nostalgia with Happy Days and the birth of the 'modern' enjoyment sitcoms as an escape to comfort like Cheers and Cosby in the 1980s.

As a history buff I have a bit of knowledge of Europe, and more the UK, up until WW2 but little afterwards. So these trends would go flying right over my head. It is good to hear from someone who experienced the times that Last of the Summer Wine was portraying and can track how they influenced the series across the many decades.
 
bigcat said:
As an American I'm struggling through seasons one and two of a rewatch of Last of the Summer Wine. It is nice from the perspective of getting more of Clegg and Compo's background but I don't get the Blamire character at all and struggle to understand his words. The shows themselves don't seem as amusing as later episodes will be.
It seems more class based comedy from a very different time and place that I'm missing. Foggy seemed more the frustrated authority figure and Clegg the bemused middle man between him and Compo rather than the upper, middle and lower class dynamic. I wonder if for those of us who are not blessed to be British subjects, what with a bit of a war in the late 1700s and all, and have to rely on the BBC and PG Wodehouse for our understanding of the culture of the Emerald Isle, this dynamic is easier to comprehend and more amusing?
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The first 2 series where more gritty and grimy when foggy came into it seems to have gone for a more slapstick approach with it
 
bigcat said:
Thank you mashibinbin.

You make some very interesting observations. I wrote something of a book on 1950s US sitcoms and I'm moving toward another on the 1960s, currently watching a lot of Andy Griffith. Over here I can see the times changing notably escapism followed by then reality as the 1960s gave way to the 1970s and the Americanization of those shows Norman Lear borrowed from you along with MASH. Followed by a return to 1950s nostalgia with Happy Days and the birth of the 'modern' enjoyment sitcoms as an escape to comfort like Cheers and Cosby in the 1980s.

As a history buff I have a bit of knowledge of Europe, and more the UK, up until WW2 but little afterwards. So these trends would go flying right over my head. It is good to hear from someone who experienced the times that Last of the Summer Wine was portraying and can track how they influenced the series across the many decades.
Click to expand...
I only experienced some of them being an old at heart 42 year old but thankyou :D
 
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