Whatever Happened in Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads...

 

I am rather busy at the moment so haven’t had time to fill this blog with random nonsense… but it being two weeks since I wrote more than twenty words I think I should report that I have now watched (thanks to Ava Alexis’s Christmas presents) ALL of the Likely Lads and Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads and the Likely Lads film which comes with the two old episodes of the Likely Lads that were only recovered in 2018.

Unfortunately most of the original Likely Lads episodes have been wiped by the BBC but the episodes that remain are rather fun.  There is an innocence about them.  Clearly budgets all but precluded any location filming so when the boys go out on the town their exploits are often related in snapshot montages which have a comedy syntax of their own.  The studio audience seem well up for it too and very jolly and you can see a very direct interaction between them and actors.  No one’s breaking the fourth wall but there’s quite a bit of playing to the gallery.  This was Clement and La Frenais’s first TV comedy and I think one of them once said that this big break for them came entirely because someone had just invented BBC2 and suddenly they realised there was no content to put on it.  The episodes as a result, despite being conventional in many ways, have a refreshing feel.  Even now.  Of course the show’s old.  So old that Bob and Terry actually work Ellison's Electrical which is a factory – remember those? 

Cloughie and Jack represent the world weary and work weary older workers and Michael Sheard puts in a couple of memorable performances as an unlovable middle management type …before going onto a long career of playing sour unlovable middle class pompous bullies like Grange Hill’s Mr Bronson.

Sheila Fearn as Terry’s sister Audrey is possibly the most prominent secondary character.  It’s amusing that for all Bob and Terry’s strutting as young men about town they both still live at home with their parents and we encounter both Terry’s parents (Edith and Cyril) frequently.  Audrey regularly brings them down to earth with a bump.  Edith reoccurs frequently in the sequel but what happened to Cyril remains a mystery – although I think he may be referenced in reported speech sometimes.  Due to a lack of acting credits for Alex McDonald after 1973 on IMDB I guess he may have not been alive for the sequel…

At the end of The Likely Lads Bob Ferris joins the army only to be discharged for having flat feet but in the meantime Terry Collier has joined to be with him and is therefore stuck in the army on his own.  The two are separated and this sets up the premise for the following Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads.  The reason I remember Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads so well (apart from its many repeats) is that it was ahead of its time with its continuing storylines. 

Series 1 has a continuing narrative about Bob and Thelma’s impending marriage.  A storyline that takes 13 episodes to resolve.  

 It’s unusual that the writers and producers thought they had enough material to make what would be the equivalent of two normal six episode series back to back – and it works.  Another thing that I hadn’t noticed until I watched the episodes back to back is that there are actually two versions of the titles – both the same material but reordered so that Rodney Bewes appears first in the titles one week and James Bolam appears first the next with the result that they each had top billing on alternate weeks. 

One has to wonder whether there was any discussion about this – particularly given the reported antipathy Bewes had towards Bolam in later life.  Bewes said Bolam never talked to him for years but, well, unless you’re Laurel and Hardy who really were best mates what is there to say when you’re no longer working with someone?  I used to do lots of gigs with Jimbo but I haven’t talked to him for years.  This doesn’t mean I don’t care what happened to him but I think it would be a bit weird if I just rang him up out the blue all the time… Fortunately this has never stopped anyone on the Daily Mail website writing sage comments about how Bolam must be a nasty piece of work?  Perhaps he is, perhaps he isn’t but at least when Bewes died he had the grace to say he had fond memories of working with him.  Anyway I’m reviewing fantasy not real life and…

…I also realised that the rubble the children seem to be playing in is created by slum clearance and not, as I had thought for years, by WWII bomb damage…despite this being clearly explained in dialogue.  There was a lot of WWII bomb rubble about even in the 70s.  I think we see that car park from Get Carter too.  The slum clearance theme continues through the series and into the film…

Despite not having seen Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads in about 10 years certain parts of the series are etched in my memory.  For example Bob’s explanation of why he has to get married because he’s suburban and small town.  Not to mention the memorable episode where Bob decides not to have a stag night but still ends up in a prison cell.  Of course, Terry, in the early episodes is very much the ranting anti-hero.  Yet despite his protestations to the contrary he must, as Bob points out, have enjoyed his time in the army or he wouldn’t have signed up for a further tour. 

Like all good antiheros Terry’s often bigoted rants often contain a kernel of truth from which he has spun a ridiculous fantasy leaving them as entertaining enough to be funny – particularly when Bob picks at the corners of a premise.  Bob is often deluded too but in a more fanciful way.  For instance Bob has a poorly disguised crush on his secretary Wendy (Elizabeth Lax) who is completely disinterested in him which Terry picks up on.  Sometimes they even seem to gang up on Bob together – weary in different ways of his pomposity.

In episode 1 Terry has been invalided out of the army (how he managed to sustain such an injury in peacetime is never fully explained because “I don’t talk about it”) and so has effectively been made redundant in his mid-thirties.  While Bob struggles to get on in business, Terry had decided to drop out.  Although portrayed as bitter, irresponsible and feckless one wonders if Terry might also be suffering from some kind of depression brought on by his sudden redundancy.  He spends a lot of time in bed. 

Terry’s antipathy towards Thelma wears off throughout the series and it’s quite touching at the end when he sees them off on their honeymoon.  During the second series, however, Bob’s marriage that deteriorates as he endlessly tries to find excuses to go out boozing with Terry or off the rails and Terry seems to be the one who has a problem with this.  Memorable moments in this series include Bob’s monologue about the “sheer number of things you have to do” as he struggles with his life of trying to climb the corporate ladder, do night school and go on skiing holidays.  Bob is somewhat deluded about his skiing abilities and it’s a running joke that only Thelma can ski proficiently.  At one point when Bob is trying to find another excuse to go on the prowl with Terry, Terry tartly reminds him that “or you could go home to your wife".  Terry is, of course, somewhat jealous of Bob's seemingly happy marriage.

There are standard comedy episodes such a Bob and Terry having a cycling competition and both cheating to interrupt all this.  Bob and Terry also get in trouble with the law a bit more – such as when Bob gets done for drink driving and Terry comes up with complex Withnail &I type scheme for urine substitution … you wouldn’t get away with it today… they also end up in front of the local magistrate for brawling on several occasions.

As the 2nd series goes on Bob and Thelma’s marriage gets more and more rocky and by the time of the final Christmas special they’re going (knowingly or unknowingly) to a fancy dress swingers party where Bob actually does start cheating and even steals a car at one point.   

By the time of the Likely Lads film that followed the series things have come full circle and Terry is the one trying to climb the social ladder while Bob is fishing through the rubble of the recently demolished Fat Ox and openly talking about cheating on Thelma.  Indeed, he’s quite openly cruel to her.  Much of the story is very broad farce but it’s rather sad and poignant when after being literally caught with their trousers down once too often Bob says “We can explain” and Terry says “No, we can’t.” 

In the end Bob gets stuck on a ship bound for Barhain after Terry decides to emigrate and bottle it – a sort of reversal of the cliff-hanger ending of the original series.

Bob and Terry’s world is also memorably populated by some interesting side characters such as (a pre-Last of the Summer Wine) Bill Owen as Thelma’s philandering father.  Although given the way his wife (a pre-Miss Marple Joan Hickson who later regenerates into Noel Dyson) hectors everyone one can’t feel too judgemental about this even though it leads to Bob and Terry having to try and hide his affair from Thelma (with hilarious consequences)… And also of course a plethora of unseen characters including Norman Gordon, Alan Boyle, Barry Pringle, Malcolm Price, Ronnie Oliver, Alan Stamp, Vin Welsh, Celia Fulcher, Norma Braithwaite, Janice Wainwright, Briony Hunt, Jutta Baumgarten, Wendy Thwaites, and the much maligned Deirdre Birchwood about whom the lads frequently reminisce or tell parables …