Episodes
Open All Hours
March 25, 1973
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.
Prisoner and Escort
April 1, 1973
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).
My Old Man
April 8, 1973
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.
Spanner's Eleven
April 15, 1973
The tale of ailing football team Ashfield Athletic and its trainer, local cabbie/hot-dog salesman/chauffeur Norman Spanner.
Another Fine Mess
April 22, 1973
Ronnie Barker and Roy Castle as two Laurel and Hardy impersonators who become their characters as an evening's farcical events escalate around them.
One Man's Meat
April 29, 1973
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.
I'll Fly You for a Quid
May 6, 1973
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).
