Series Two

Pearl

Pearl

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Series Two gave us Who's That Dancing With Nora Batty Then and Some Enchanted Evening.

Those are my two favorites from that series. Its also the last series with Blamire in.

Well written and the characters are really coming into their own now. Who knew that it would be the next series that could have potentially put the show on its head.

Lucky for us it didn't.
 
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As I said previously my favourite would have to be FORKED LIGHTNING because of all the fun they seemed to have making it. The rest are very good but the weakest one has to be A QUIET DRINK. :30: :tux:
 
I agree Dick "A Quiet Drink" was the weakest episode. I thought "The Changing Face of Rural Blamire" had its moments. My favourite has to be "A Ballad for Wind Instruments & Canoe".
 
cciaffone said:
A Quiet Drink is just the worst SW episode ever. Not sure why
I feel that way, 'cept the way the woman is treated is
pretty bad.
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I think this is first time I agree with you Chuck but because of the misogynist tendencies just because I found it boring.
 
Does anyone know in what order the episodes were filmed? I've read that after filming was complete, the BBC would select what they believed to be the three strongest episodes to air first, second and last, but I don't know if they were doing that early on. Michael Bates was finding it more and more difficult to get around as that filming season progressed, so I wonder if "A Quiet Drink" might have been the last one filmed, and if the script had to be modified to accommodate his increasing disability.

Marianna
 
Forked lightening would be my favourite from this year. The capers with the bicycle, the people waiting at the bus stop applauding Clegg when his chain came off and Sid's mishap outside the cafe make this episode a memorable one.
 
My favorite episodes are 'The Changing Face of Rural Blamire' and 'Forked Lightening', although I could have done without the 'Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head' production number. Sid could have crashed the bicycle without the trick riding and I would have found it just as funny.

Those episodes are tied for first place for me, and 'Ballad for Wind Instruments and Canoe' comes in a close second. I didn't fully appreciate Blamire's response, "Chindits", when Compo was scoffing at his military service until I read excerpts from the diary of a WWI serviceman who had served with the Chindits Special Force, Burma. It was published in a recent issue of the journal of a family history society that I belong to, and gave me a whole new perspective on how physically and mentally tough Blamire must have been. That was the beginning of my warming to the character.

Marianna
 
index4u said:
Does anyone know in what order the episodes were filmed? I've read that after filming was complete, the BBC would select what they believed to be the three strongest episodes to air first, second and last, but I don't know if they were doing that early on. Michael Bates was finding it more and more difficult to get around as that filming season progressed, so I wonder if "A Quiet Drink" might have been the last one filmed, and if the script had to be modified to accommodate his increasing disability.

Marianna
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Where did you hear that Bates had any issues filming Series 2? Andrew Vine's book says his health decline was triggered by an injury suffered doing pantomime after that series (which was filmed in 1974), an injury that initially looked like a groin pull/tear thing but later turned out to be cancer. As he was not improving from the injury, he was unable to continue with the series when they returned to filming in 1976. But as far as I know it didn't affect him in Series 2.

I've always wondered about the order things were filmed, but I'm not sure its as simple as them being filmed in a particular order. After all, they would do all the location filming separately from most/all of the interior filming, so that means they weren't completing one episode before doing the next. For example, I'm pretty sure I read they filmed the two Scarborough episodes first in Series 3, at least the parts done on location.

As for Series 2, Ballad for Wind Instruments is probably my favorite episode in the series and I think its probably the best Blamire era episode. I agree with others that A Quiet Drink is pretty weak, and I've never liked Northern Flying Circus all that much since its an endless succession of Compo physical gags mostly filmed with them in the pub.
 
I might agree that 'A Quiet Drink' was the weakest of any in the Blamire era but I would still rate it above any in the Hobbo years.
 
index4u said:
Does anyone know in what order the episodes were filmed? I've read that after filming was complete, the BBC would select what they believed to be the three strongest episodes to air first, second and last, but I don't know if they were doing that early on. Michael Bates was finding it more and more difficult to get around as that filming season progressed, so I wonder if "A Quiet Drink" might have been the last one filmed, and if the script had to be modified to accommodate his increasing disability.

Marianna
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That sounds probable. Never thought of that. "Drink" was a different setting we were not use to.
 
brendalovescompo said:
That sounds probable. Never thought of that. "Drink" was a different setting we were not use to.
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I was home on a holiday this past Monday and was bummed that the 1:30 showing of Summer Wine was going to be a "Qiuet Drink". However, I watched it anyway and found it was good afterall.

There were comments here about the guys not treating the drunk lady well, but a lot of us here also appreciate the rougher, edgier Blamire years, where the guys were a little less "nice". During the redundancy era and the tendency of the guys, I thought it was only appropriate to have a full episode in a bar.
 
cciaffone said:
A Quiet Drink is just the worst SW episode ever. Not sure why
I feel that way, 'cept the way the woman is treated is
pretty bad.
Click to expand...

While not disagreeing with that point of view, at the time it was written the approach was relatively common - mid to late 1970s were not particularly good on treatments that we would not accept at all today. It was in tune with its times, nearly 40 years ago and the world has changed an awful lot since then.
 
Well, my biggest problem with the episode ("A Quiet Drink) is really that it takes place almost entirely indoors or just outside the pub. It's not a typical Summerwine episode in that regard. Then you throw in a bunch of time spent on characters we've never seen before, and it almost comes across like a semi-pilot for something else somebody was thinking about doing. Like maybe Clarke and/or the BBC was thinking about doing a series set in a pub with interesting characters so the idea was incorporated into a Summerwine episode as a test.

On the other hand, there are a few other Summerwine episodes where it seems like they are introducing a new character with all the time spent on them. "A Bicycle made for Three" comes to mind, with Joe Melia's Percy/Dirk getting a lot of attention.
 
barmpot said:
While not disagreeing with that point of view, at the time it was written the approach was relatively common - mid to late 1970s were not particularly good on treatments that we would not accept at all today. It was in tune with its times, nearly 40 years ago and the world has changed an awful lot since then.
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In addition, sometimes comedy is based around poor traits of characters. In the US, we had Archie Bunker and his bigotted views and then George Castanza on Seinfeld being very cheap and superficial. It was all part of the comedy. The roughness of the guys in the Blamire years was part of the comedy. I also caught New Mobile Trio this week. There was the scene where Clegg kicks the teenager out of the driving game.

Then again, I am accustomed to the later years and I can imagine if someone can watch decades of the kind Clegg (let's say from the Seymour years to the end of the Trully years) then one can be in for a shock if they catch a Blamire episode for the first time.

Looking back at some of my favorite British shows, Basil Fawlty and the guys from the Young Ones definitely had plenty of character flaws.
 
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