Written by Dick Clement and Ian la Frenais.
Starring Rodney Bewes as Bob, James Bolam as Terry
(First shown on BBC-2)
The Likely Lads
In an entertainment era that shows an escalating tendency to concentrate on extravagant plots, wild decor, weird costumes, grotesque characters, and flamboyant dialogue, The Likely Lads stick out like a couple of healthy thumbs surrounded by sore fingers. Bob (Rodney Bewes) and Terry (James Bolam) are normal, undisturbed young Northerners. Their occupation is electrical engineering and their preoccupation is girls. Their adventures are thoroughly plausible. Only their gift for incisive repartee places them above the average.
But there's a little more than that to the phenomenal success of this series - which is now being re-run in its entirety (twenty episodes), and which is not only likely to be adapted for radio, but is also the inspiration for a forthcoming paperback of Likely Lads stories.
Dick Clement, the producer and co-author (with Ian La Frenais), thinks the close-knit involvement of the four collaborators is what made the show. ' The idea began as a revue sketch for amateur theatricals, a Christmas 1961 concert by the BBC's Ariel Players. I was a studio manager at the time, with an urge to write. Ian, a drinking crony who toiled in market research, and I used to collaborate on sketches in our spare time.
'In that concert I played one of the lads. Later that old sketch was expanded for my test programme on a director's course. The BBC thought it might be the basis for a series. Naturally we agreed and sat down to write six scripts. Finding the right actors took some time - until Jimmy and Rodney came along. Their sympathy with the series has been total. In fact Jimmy has recently been helping us with adaptations for a Likely Lads paperback.'
And the Lads themselves? James Bolam is just back from Broadway where he appeared in How's the World Treating You? and Rodney Bewes has been telling stories in Jackanory and playing Tony Lumpkin in She Stoops to Conquer at the Oxford Playhouse.
