Seven of One
★ 7.3 · 1973 · 30m · Comedy
Seven of One is a 1973 BBC2 comedy anthology starring Ronnie Barker. 7 of 1 is a series of seven separate comedies that would serve as possible pilots for sitcoms, three of which were picked up for a full series run. Originally called Six of One, which Barker planned to follow up with another series called Half Dozen of the Other.
Episodes
1. Open All Hours30m · Stammering shopkeep Albert Arkwright runs a tight little corner shop in a Doncaster suburb. Certainly he's tight when it comes to cost-saving and his put-upon nephew Granville, whose mother apparently gave birth to him after a fling with a Hungarian, bears the brunt of Arkwright's doomed money-making schemes. The lad has to ride a delivery bike when he'd rather impress the girl at the garage with a van. Meanwhile, Arkwright lusts after district nurse Gladys Emmanuel.
Open All Hours received a full programme order, and had a successful four series run on BBC2 and BBC1.
2. Prisoner and Escort30m · Norman Stanley Fletcher is being escorted to Slade Prison for a five-year sentence. Mr Barrowclough and Mr Mackay make the journey with him on New Year's Eve.
Prisoner and Escort was developed into a programme and became Porridge (1974–1977), which led to a spin-off Going Straight (1978), a feature film adaptation (1979), and a sequel programme (2016–2017).
3. My Old Man30m · Sam Cobbett is a cantankerous, retired railwayman whose house is demolished by the council, forcing him to live in a tower block with his daughter Doris and her husband, whom he sees as posh and with whom there is mutual antagonism.
My Old Man was further developed into a 1974–75 sitcom of the same name, produced by Yorkshire Television and broadcast on ITV. However, Barker was uninvolved, and featured an entirely new cast led by Clive Dunn.
4. Spanner's Eleven30m · The tale of ailing football team Ashfield Athletic and its trainer, local cabbie/hot-dog salesman/chauffeur Norman Spanner.
5. Another Fine Mess30m · Ronnie Barker and Roy Castle as two Laurel and Hardy impersonators who become their characters as an evening's farcical events escalate around them.
6. One Man's Meat30m · Alan Joyce is a slovenly, greedy man whose wife devises a plan to keep him off food for a day. She goes out and takes not only all the food from the house but Alan's clothes. He rings the police to no great avail. He rings a Chinese takeaway but they have stopped delivering.
7. I'll Fly You for a Quid30m · A Welsh family, the Owens, who bet on absolutely everything and anything, discover that their grandfather backed a winner on the day he died — but where is the betting slip?
I'll Fly You for a Quid was Barker's favourite, and he initially chose to do as a series. However, the BBC convinced him that it would be harder to do a full series of scripts about Evan Owen in a Welsh gambling community compared to the prison setting of Prisoner and Escort. Barker adapted the idea into The Magnificent Evans (1984).More Like This
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