The video version of our latest episode is out now: youtu.be/ijlnPXmBDrY Please like, subscribe and share the video around, as it really does help us out. Thanks.
06.12.2025 18:26
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The video version of our latest episode is out now: youtu.be/ijlnPXmBDrY Please like, subscribe and share the video around, as it really does help us out. Thanks.
We are in the new @radiotimes.bsky.social! Huge thanks to @braxtm.bsky.social for a lovely, full-page feature - discussing our latest release 'Patchwuff' with the legendary Sandra Kerr and our own @andrewtsmith.bsky.social. Extended version now on the RT website:
www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/bag...
Roy Clarke wrote a play for the BBC Light Programme and the BBC iPlayer.
The BBC’s job is to “inform, educate, and entertain”? Let’s talk about the middle word.
What follows is the story of what we found in an FOI request (per the Observer) about the Corporation killing off plans to launch an online catalogue and failing to deliver ‘learning for people of all ages’. 🧵
RIP NEIL SEDAKA
I found the brashness a lot to get used to, but ended up falling in love with that show.
I still miss this series. It was the best company and I doubt anything like it will be made again. It was like a secret broadcast.
Journeying back to the North East after visiting Sir Roy Clarke and members of his wonderful family. Writing this book has taken longer than either of us anticipated – partly because even I had underestimated the scope of his output – but we're on the home stretch now!
We were rather inexplicably shown 'Dave' a few times when the drama department couldn't be bothered to teach. That's the 1993 film in which Kevin Kline replaces his doppelgänger – the president of the United States – after the latter dies shagging.
Cover of Penda's Fen: Scene by Scene.
‘Astonishing. I enjoyed a deeper working involvement in the making of the film than most authors are granted — but even so, there was so much going on that I didn’t know. Thank you for teaching me’ David Rudkin ‘Indispensable. It left me longing to see the film again and wishing that television today had room for works of such outstanding individual imagination’ Michael Billington
‘A comprehensive, immersive deep dive into the creation of David Rudkin and Alan Clarke’s massively influential and hallucinatory coming-of-age story. Highly recommended!’ Grant Morrison ‘Play for Today was, for many years, the most exciting strand in British television and Penda’s Fen is one of its most remarkable highpoints: visionary, original and under perfect control’ David Hare
‘A welcome revelation of insight, background and new resonances to Clarke’s masterwork’ Jim O'Rourke ***** ‘Surely the definitive statement on Penda’s Fen’ SFX Magazine ‘A first-class read. It is like witnessing a first-class documentary in written form’ Spencer Banks
Praise for our book Penda's Fen: Scene by Scene, @greavesian.bsky.social's definitive exploration of the classic Play for Today from script to screen. Available now from tenacrebooks.co.uk
This has just gained someone an ebay sale from me.
I had no idea this was anything other than a theme tune!
And Voyager is great and would have been even better with Julie Walters in it 😘
They seem to very quickly sweep aside the fact that Mirror Georgiou was full on Pol Pot before she turned up in the prime universe. She full on eats people, but it's already 'cos she's a bit sassy.
What is the deal with modern Star Trek series and opening titles? Fifteen minutes into an hour long episode, your title sequence fails to be a scene setter and instead become an unwelcome interruption.
Tonight on BBC4, Sir Roy Clarke introduces a classic episode of 'Open All Hours' in advance of the series' 50th anniversary later this month.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...
This month marks 50 years of 'Open All Hours' and Roy Clarke is on hand to recall how it all came together. Here, he speaks to the Radio Times.
So sorry, Neil.
It's the most blatant pilot passed off as a special and if the biggest pop star on the planet can't get the numbers in then I think the Muppets really are done with for now.
The new Muppet Show special with Sabrina Carpenter is about as good as any fan could have hoped for. Why they haven't tried this approach before is a mystery. Just get a move on with the next one. Momentum is key!
I've just been on the phone with the old young Bill... he's delightful. Very pleased to say that Paul Greenwood has now contributed an interview to Writing All Hours.
The opening scenes of Roy Clarke's 'Pictures' – a seven part series broadcast by ITV in 1983. I don't think it has ever been repeated in the UK.
Earnshaw willing!
Quietly announced yesterday amongst the Roy Clarke birthday celebrations – my new biography of the man is to be titled 'Writing All Hours'
It is on Youtube in pretty decent quality.
My book on all of this and more will be published by Ten Acre Books later in the year. If you'd like to be kept posted visit: www.summerwinos.co.uk/biography
All of this, amazingly, is only scratching the surface and I haven't even gotten around to Roy Clarke, the man. Since I've known him, he has consistently shown himself to be warm, generous and decent. Hopefully, he's having a lovely day doing whatever the hell he wants.
The cast also expands and diversifies – somehow managing to retain a timeless feel while brining the show up to date.
Decades on from the last time we visited, Arkwright's is now run by Granville, who has inherited many of his uncle's penny-pinching ways whilst still somehow remaining the silly young lad we knew way back when.
To everybody's surprise, the series' one-off revival, Still Open All Hours, proved to be a monster hit when it was shown on Boxing Day 2013. Six full series followed, with the show coming to a premature end due to Covid.
