Open All Hours

Modays at 8:00pm

Open All Hours takes an absurd, affectionate and hilarious look at the ‘cut and thrust’ of life in the traditional British corner-shop. Arkwright has not yet emerged from the dark ages of commerce. He is rude and mercenary in equal measure, buying food from his shop is a kind of gastronomic lottery and dietician’s nightmare. He is obsessed by his twin business objectives; grooming the hapless Granville for business success, and exploiting an infinitely gullible public. He constantly fights a losing battle to transform his lackadaisical nephew Granville into a worthy heir to his commercial empire. This involves thwarting Granville’s amorous prospects and daydreams of wild adventure by ensuring that he is never allowed to wander much beyond the boundaries of his delivery round. This leaves Arkwright with just enough time to conjure up his ever more ludicrous schemes for enticing unwar y passers-by into his shop. Of course, once inside Arkwright’s Emporium it’s impossible to leave empty handed. In those few hours that Arkwright can bear to close the shop, his lecherous attentions turn to neighbour, customer and objet d’amour, the voluptuous nurse Gladys Emmanuel. Despite his persistence and some hilariously cunning ruses, Nurse Gladys manages, quite expertly, to keep her shopkeeper fiancee from getting his hands on her comestibles . . . most of the time that is!

 

Good Neighbors

Mondays at 8:30pm

There must be more to life than communting into the office every day, year after year, thinks Tom Good (Richard Briers). Determined to do away with all the irritation and tedium of the rat race, he decides to become self-sufficient in this amusing and poignant comedy series.

Barabara, Tom's wife, agrees to his outlandish plan, and without a second thought he packs in his job as a draughtsman designing plastic toys to be given away in ceral boxes.

The first step in their new lifestyle is to dig up the well-laid lawn of their suburban yard and turn it into a vegetable plot. What will the neighbors think? Especially Margo Ledbetter, a complete snob who -- with her bridge classes and amateur dramatics -- likes to keep the right tone in this exclusive neighborhood.

As idyllic as the good life sounds, Tom and Barbara soon find it much harder work than they'd anticipated, but the hilarity still creeps in. Overcoming drought, flood and pestilence they celebrate their first harvest. From then on they take their battle for self-suffciently even further -- spinning wool, rearing chickens, designing a generator to make electricity from animal dung -- well, it all adds to the amusing, rich tapestry of life...

 

A Fine Romance

Mondays at 9:00pm

Co-starring with her real-life husband Michael Williams, Judi Dench chose this as her launch into TV comedy. She plays Laura, a translator by profession, brainy, single and contented, entering middle-age with dignity and her own agenda. Reluctantly, she attends a party thrown by her younger sister where sure enough she is heavy-handedly introduced to a potential mate. Mike is also in his forties, a landscape gardener, and worst of all, short, shy, and boring. But the pair pretend to be interested in one another, if only to leave the party. Over four seasons, this fine romance develops, blooms, withers and is reborn, with wedding bells ringing as the curtain comes down..

 

 

 

 

My Family

Mondays at 9:30

My Family is about the life of the Harpers, a fictional middle-class English family, who live in 78 Lancaster Road, Chiswick, London. Ben, a dentist, and Susan, a tour guide who later works for an art gallery, have three children, Nick, Janey and Michael, all of whom cause problems in their own way. While Susan is a control freak, Ben prefers to leave the children to it and tries not to get involved. Janey later goes to University, but drops out and moves back in later, while Nick finally gets his own place.