First Episode
- Thread starter chris
- Start date
Foggy Dewhurst
Dedicated Member
I watched it the other day it is an energetic episode in many ways, quite a lot going on as I suppose you can expect in a pilot edition.
Edith Clegg was 20 odd years older than Norman?
Marianna
Dedicated Member
Perhaps at the pilot stage Roy Clarke had no inkling that Last of the Summer Wine might run long enough for Clegg to have been around 100 by the end. His age wasn't firmly established for me until First of the Summer Wine, which is set in 1939 with him beginning each episode by saying, "The diary of Norman Clegg, 18 years of age."
It's a bit similar to my favorite novelist, Barbara Pym, and her characters Jessie Morrow and Miss Doggett. She first used them in an unpublished short story and then in the novel Crampton Hodnet, but when she returned to the novel after World War II to edit it before sending it to prospective publishers she decided that it was too dated to be salvageable. Later she felt free to reuse those characters in Jane and Prudence, but with substantial changes to Jessie's personality. After Pym's death, her literary executor returned to Crampton Hodnet and decided that by then it was a period piece, rather than dated, so she polished it and submitted it for publication. The marked difference in Jessie has confused readers ever since. The discrepancy in Norman's age is only mildly confusing in comparison.
brendalovescompo
Dedicated Member
I brought up this question back around the end of 2013. I think some said that sometimes they didn't have the birth year on some tombstones. Others said that since being the first episode it was just a throw together prop and I suppose they didn't expect people to catch something like that.
Let alone lasting 37 years!!
Let alone lasting 37 years!!
amos hames
Dedicated Member
I have always liked the first episode. Who would have thought that after that episode it would last 37 years. No other comedy show will ever touch that record.
Sarkus
Dedicated Member
I don't think that is the case, though Andrew Vine's book says that the BBC originally asked Clarke to make the show about older men. Later they decided to make them be in their early 50s, which is what Sallis and Bates were at the time. So the gravestone is just one of those oddities. It's hard to say what it actually says anyway. My theory is that they modified a gravestone (most likely a prop) to say something like "1920" but in the lighting it kind of disappeared.
As for the younger woman coming out of (what was later established as) Nora's house, you have to remember that Nora was not meant to be a major or recurring character when they filmed the pilot. She was just one of three women who were there to help estabish who Compo was in that initial scene. Compo even refers to her husband by a different name. After the pilot aired the BBC surveyed viewers and found that they had really liked the interaction between Compo and Nora and so Clarke brought the character back for a few appearances in the first series. That went well and she became a regular from series 2 on.
I remember a while back Terry saying that a digitally enhanced Railway Children showed up some anomalies in the background ( You remember Big Unc, lead to whole Jenny Agutter being naked ramblings?!) anyway, maybe it now shows up better on certain TV's?! If we ever get a digitally enhanced Summer Wine we'd be able the lay it to rest.
I wonder what kind of anomalies that would show up!
Marianna
Dedicated Member
Yes, the shadow cast by the flowers obscures the birth date. I just used a magnifying glass look closely at the scene where the camera zoomed in on the headstone, and I just can't make the third numeral look like a 2. There are definite matching curves on the sides, just like in the final numeral. (Do I need to get a life?)
I'm sure that no one involved with the pilot ever dreamed that we'd be even be viewing it, not to mention picking it apart, all these years later.
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No not a life, but if you could bring your magnifying glass over here I dropped a tablet earlier and can't find it :-[
:biggrin:
Marianna
Dedicated Member
No not a life, but if you could bring your magnifying glass over here I dropped a tablet earlier and can't find it :-[
Any excuse for a trip to the UK! ;D
It's not a clear date on the headstone, and somewhere around 1920 would be about right based on what we later learnt in the series.
I believe in The Frozen Turkey Man we get a good idea of their ages, and certainly in FOTSW. Things get a bit uncertain looking at Compo's passport in Last Post and Pigeon. And I like to think Norman Clegg's Secret Birthday is 80.
However, this is the pilot, so details were vague at this time.
The show was specifically designed to be about old people.
With that in mind, would it not be more suitable then for the characters to be around 70 then, rather than a mere 50, or 52?
I can't remember in the pilot if the trio are at this stage revealed to be unemployed/redundant.
I like the pilot, but I don't think it really 'starts' the story. There's no particular distinction that firmly puts this episode before any of Series One. What I'm trying to say is the pilot is like any other early episode, because we don't see Clegg leaving his job, or his wife's funeral, or anything like that.
I suppose you could say the show started as quietly as it ended...
There is no real beginning or no real end.
I believe in The Frozen Turkey Man we get a good idea of their ages, and certainly in FOTSW. Things get a bit uncertain looking at Compo's passport in Last Post and Pigeon. And I like to think Norman Clegg's Secret Birthday is 80.
However, this is the pilot, so details were vague at this time.
The show was specifically designed to be about old people.
With that in mind, would it not be more suitable then for the characters to be around 70 then, rather than a mere 50, or 52?
I can't remember in the pilot if the trio are at this stage revealed to be unemployed/redundant.
I like the pilot, but I don't think it really 'starts' the story. There's no particular distinction that firmly puts this episode before any of Series One. What I'm trying to say is the pilot is like any other early episode, because we don't see Clegg leaving his job, or his wife's funeral, or anything like that.
I suppose you could say the show started as quietly as it ended...
There is no real beginning or no real end.
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Marianna
Dedicated Member
It occurred to me late last night that the possible 1900 birth date on the headstone would be a good fit for Clegg's mother, if he was 18 in 1939.
Whoever said that the headstone was most likely a generic prop with the name and death date added probably had it right. That may be why the scene was shot with the birth date in shadow. At ordinary screen size, that area of the stone would be completely unreadable.
Whoever said that the headstone was most likely a generic prop with the name and death date added probably had it right. That may be why the scene was shot with the birth date in shadow. At ordinary screen size, that area of the stone would be completely unreadable.
Sarkus
Dedicated Member
As I noted above, Clarke was originally asked to come up with a sitcom premise about three older men. So elements of that are inherent in the basic premise of three old guys with nothing to do spending their days together. It was later, presumably before Clarke actually sat down to write the pilot, that the decision was made to have the men be younger, in their 50s. Which is why Clarke says in the 25th Anniversary special that he had Sallis in mind for Clegg. Having the trio be younger worked in the context of the time because in the early 1970s the economy in the UK lead to quite a few men of that age finding themselves out of work. It seems odd to us today because we view the 50s to be an age when most people are still working.
I think the show reinforces that the characters are supposed to be of that age in many ways, even if its not explicitly laid out in the early episodes. The obvious evidence is the casting of the actors - Bates was born in 1920, Sallis in 1921. Then you throw in the early references in the series to the three men all having served in WW2 (watch Short Back and Palais Glide), and I don't think anyone watching at the time would have thought the characters were supposed to be anything but roughly the same age as the actors who played them.
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barmpot
LOTSW Fanatic
Clegg refers to being redundant (as a lino salesman) and Blamire was ex Army, which he would have left probably about the age of 40 then worked in an associated capacity for some years.
I think the date was deliberately obscured so as to be indefinite giving Clegg, for example an age of anything from 50 to 60. He does mention in one episode getting married during the depression which implies early 1930s - however that throws out the dates which fit First of ...
The real problem is that when started it was never conceived to continue so long, nor that it would be subject to such close analysis.
I think the date was deliberately obscured so as to be indefinite giving Clegg, for example an age of anything from 50 to 60. He does mention in one episode getting married during the depression which implies early 1930s - however that throws out the dates which fit First of ...
The real problem is that when started it was never conceived to continue so long, nor that it would be subject to such close analysis.