Frozen Turkey Man.

I'd recommend that a friend start with Of Funerals and Fish and follow up with Short Back and Palais Glide. Those episodes together introduce the main characters and set the tone for the first two seasons.

Marianna
 
I'd recommend The Mysterious Feet Of Nora Batty because it show all the characters at their best.
 
I wonder if Joe Gladwin's age had anything to do with his early rarer appearances? By later standards he wasn't particularly old, but relative to the rest of the cast he was older - seven years older then Bill Owen, about 15 years older then Sallis, Bates, Comer, Freeman, and about 20 years older then Kathy Staff. Maybe they felt they should treat him with kids gloves, or maybe he wasn't interested in appearing in every episode.
 
Sarkus said:
I wonder if Joe Gladwin's age had anything to do with his early rarer appearances? By later standards he wasn't particularly old, but relative to the rest of the cast he was older - seven years older then Bill Owen, about 15 years older then Sallis, Bates, Comer, Freeman, and about 20 years older then Kathy Staff. Maybe they felt they should treat him with kids gloves, or maybe he wasn't interested in appearing in every episode.
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This brings me to another point(sorry age mention Sarkus), even at their age, the boys were very ??? let's say, flexible?? I'm going through the series again and I just finished "white's man grave" I'm amazed how they can act that "physically" at their age. I hope I'm that limber when I'm their age.
 
WesleyRocks said:
This brings me to another point(sorry age mention Sarkus), even at their age, the boys were very ??? let's say, flexible?? I'm going through the series again and I just finished "white's man grave" I'm amazed how they can act that "physically" at their age. I hope I'm that limber when I'm their age.
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Know what you mean! Me too! I am 49 now. A lot has gone down for me in my 40's, but still young at heart!!!:wink:
 
brendalovescompo said:
Know what you mean! Me too! I am 49 now. A lot has gone down for me in my 40's, but still young at heart!!!:wink:
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I wonder how much of the physical comedy and literal pratfalls the stars actually did and how much was done by stunt men. Alan Bell wrote that when film technology improved to produce sharper resolution, viewers could see the actors' faces in long shots, so he could no longer use stunt men if the scene required the characters to be facing the camera. The apparent hill climbing used to impress me, until I realized that although we see them at the top, we sometimes don't see them climbing all the way up, or we see them climbing only in a very long shot. So the stars would have been driven to the top and the much younger stunt men would have done any visible climbing.

All that said, just having the stamina to put in the long work days, some of it out in the cold, the rest of the time spent waiting in the caravan, must have been exhausting for people of their ages. Waiting around is nearly as tiring for me as doing something productive is.

Marianna
 
Pearl said:
That sounds like a good title for a new thread.

What Episode Would You Recommend To Someone Who Has Never Seen Summer wine? :)
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For me, after a focus on redundancy during the first two seasons, the show took on more of a "living free" lifestyle. I am always the one to mention that the show focused so much on care free lives of the single and oppressed lives of the husbands. To me, no episode epitomizes that more the "Set the People Free."
 
Pearl said:
That sounds like a good title for a new thread.

What Episode Would You Recommend To Someone Who Has Never Seen Summer wine? :)
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I would like to suggest an early one, Blamire, but the thick accent would turn some off. It did my sister.

Going ahead a few years, I would pick, Return of the Warrior. I would show Seymour leaving, Clegg and Compo lonely, and Foggy at his bossy best,showing almost everyone when Foggy returns, and their reaction. :16:
 
index4u said:
I wonder how much of the physical comedy and literal pratfalls the stars actually did and how much was done by stunt men. Alan Bell wrote that when film technology improved to produce sharper resolution, viewers could see the actors' faces in long shots, so he could no longer use stunt men if the scene required the characters to be facing the camera. The apparent hill climbing used to impress me, until I realized that although we see them at the top, we sometimes don't see them climbing all the way up, or we see them climbing only in a very long shot. So the stars would have been driven to the top and the much younger stunt men would have done any visible climbing.All that said, just having the stamina to put in the long work days, some of it out in the cold, the rest of the time spent waiting in the caravan, must have been exhausting for people of their ages. Waiting around is nearly as tiring for me as doing something productive is.

Marianna
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Yes, you can definitely tell at times when stuntmen were used, but even when Nora would grab Wally and make him go inside she would jerk him around a bit. Or when they would run from Ivy. ( can't think off the top of my head right now of other instances) but, there were times that you could tell it wasn't a stuntman and it was the actors.
Maybe I'm just getting soft. :D
 
Pearl said:
I think the little gems we have from those two are to be cherished. It would have been nice to see more of them but would that have made them less unique?

I think the most we saw of them was in The mysterious Feet Of Nora Batty which is one of my favorites.

The era Nora and Wally were featured the episodes were mainly lead by the three men with just snippets of other characters breaking the scenes up whereas later with the addition of more characters lead to them being more prominent, if Joe Gladwin had been around for a few more years I think we would have seen Wally and Nora taking centre stage a bit more.

I would loved to have seen a show dedicated to those two I think it would have been hilarious.
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I am currently watching the beginning of Series 8 and I had to revisit this thread. Correct me if I am wrong but aren't the Myysterious Feet and Keeping Britain Tidy, Alan Bell's first episodes? They are such classics. We have been discussing how great Nora and Wally are and how Joe Gladwin was older than the rest of the cast (and that might have had something to do with his reduced roles).

Aren't there episodes in previous series where he is hardly in the show at all? Therefor, this "resurgance of Wally" in the beginning of Series 8 is in contrast to the idea that Joe Gladwin was less involved due to his age. The comedy in Mysterious Feet is really centered around Nora and Wally. And in my opinion, as funny as Keeping Britain Tidy was, the very best scene was at the Batty residence.

I think season openers often set the pace for the series and I wonder if Bell's intention at first was to really showcase the Batty's more. However, I knew he was interested in bringing more characters in, because shortly after that, we have the introduction to Howard, Pearl, and Marina. Keeping Wally in more scenes didn't last long, however, I think Bell hit a good stride with using Wally in episodes like The Phantom and Catching Digbey's Donkey. In those Wally has one or two really solid scenes, which are hilarious of course. This kept the focus on the trio but we got a decent dose of Wally which really added to the comedy.

On a seperate note, I am becoming more like the traditional Summer Wine fans here in that I love love Wally so much. Even when the camera shows him sitting by himself at the cafe with a blank look, it is hilarious. Wally really had a pathetic look to him. Was that "beaten" look part of the character of Wally or Joe Gladwin himself?
 
I think Joe Gladwin was a quite a happy chappy so I think the glum expression was all Wally's.

He had a way of making me laugh before he even opened his mouth and the Mysterious Feet Of Nora Batty is my favorite episode, when he's in the pub the line " If she was attacked I'd have to stand there helpless, helpless, she'd have him mauled to death before I could pull her off" has me rolling round the floor.

Uncle Of The Bride has some great Wally moments in too, the scene where he's riding the bike and the whippet is running after him is just classic also the scene when he's walking the whippet and telling it that Nora is tough but fair and that " Once she gets you on staff" is for me one of the best scenes.

I love the scene where Nora is talking to Pearl and Ivy and Wally walks round the corner, see's Nora and does a u turn and scurries off is hilarious ( I should know the episode, I watched it the other day but its so hot here at the mo my brain is melting. Sorry :-[ )
[MENTION=143]codfanglers[/MENTION]
 
codfanglers said:
I am currently watching the beginning of Series 8 and I had to revisit this thread. Correct me if I am wrong but aren't the Myysterious Feet and Keeping Britain Tidy, Alan Bell's first episodes? They are such classics.
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Just to clarify, Alan Bell directed series 6 - 1982 - all except "All Mod Conned" the Christmas special. If I remember correctly Brian Wilde objected to Bell being the director and convinced them to bring Sydney Lotterby back for season 7 - 1983 - all except "Getting Sam Home" which was to be directed by Alan Bell. After Brian worked with Bell again on that special, he agreed to work with him as the regular director and producer.

So "The Mysterious Feet of Nora Batty" was his first regular show after his first series in 1982 and the "Getting Sam Home Special."

As to the real point, I agree, I would loved to have seen more of Joe Gladwin. Every scene he did was priceless, whether it was with Nora, the trio, or Sid and Ivy. I don't know whether the decision to feature him more would have been Bell's decision or if that was entirely up to Roy Clarke. I got the impression that Bell had a lot of input later in the series, but I wonder if he had that much in the beginning.
 
Just discovered Alan Bell directed Whoops the Dec. 1981 Christmas Special. So that was the very first one he directed.
 
me2 said:
Just to clarify, Alan Bell directed series 6 - 1982 - all except "All Mod Conned" the Christmas special. If I remember correctly Brian Wilde objected to Bell being the director and convinced them to bring Sydney Lotterby back for season 7 - 1983 - all except "Getting Sam Home" which was to be directed by Alan Bell. After Brian worked with Bell again on that special, he agreed to work with him as the regular director and producer.
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From what Alan Bell says in his book, the issue with Wilde was that Brian didn't adapt well to Bell's style of filmmaking as Bell had been trained to make movies and Wilde was used to working with TV style directors. Wilde did tell the BBC he wouldn't come back after Series 6 if Bell returned, but both Salis and Owen were very unhappy when they heard that. In the end the BBC "promoted" Bell by putting him in charge of the Spike Milligan series, which allowed them to bring Lotterby back (he'd been agitating in the background) and satisfy Wilde without technically giving in to him. Later, when Bell was given "Getting Sam Home," he and Wilde met and Wilde admitted that he'd been wrong to take a stand against Bell because once he'd seen the episodes from Series 6 he realized how it all came together. So Wilde had no issues making "Getting Sam Home," though he insisted that for career reasons he intended to leave the show after. The ending of "Getting Sam Home" reflects this possibility, since it ends (before the credits roll) with Foggy falling off the hill when he tries to spread Sam's ashes. Bell and Clarke apparently considered leaving it at that as an explanation for the end of Foggy if Wilde did not come back, but in the end he returned for Series 8 and so they used the also filmed sequence after the credits where you see Foggy stagger back into view.
 
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