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EspañolWHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE LIKELY LADS?
(Redirected from Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads)
'''Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?''' was a hit British sitcom broadcast between January 1973 and December 1974, as the colour sequel to the mid-1960s hit ''The Likely Lads''. It was created and written, as was its predecessor, by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. There were 27 television episodes in all over two seasons, including a 45-minute Christmas finale.
The cast later reunited for a BBC Radio adaptation that ran from July to October 1975.
A popular movie spin-off was made in 1976, around the time of the movie's release; however, the two stars Rodney Bewes and James Bolam fell out over a misunderstanding involving the press and have not spoken since. This long-suspected situation was finally confirmed by Bewes while promoting his 2005 autobiography.
The show followed the resumed friendship, after five years apart, of two young working-class men, Bob Ferris (Bewes) and Terry Collier (Bolam).
Set in North East England, assumed to be on Tyneside but never really confirmed, the humour was based on the tension between fresh-from-the-army Terry's laziness and Bob's progression to the middle class via his new white-collar job, suburban home and impending marriage to his childhood sweetheart Thelma Chambers (Brigit Forsyth).
Since the end of the original ''The Likely Lads'', in 1966, Bob has left factory life behind for an office job with his future father-in-law's building firm. However, what Bob actually does is not a major factor in the show; more important is the fact that he is now a white-collar worker, joining badminton clubs and attending dinner parties and so on.
Terry sees his extended army experience as lending him moral superiority over Bob. Nonetheless, he finds it hard to adjust to all the changes that have occurred in the five years he has been away. As implied by the show's title, the series plays on a feeling of nostalgia for the days of the lads' innocent and reckless youth.
The word "likely" in the title, which in some northern English dialects means "likeable", in this context means "likely to succeed", because in the 1960s series the two lads were on the brink of making their way in the world.
The show's catchy theme song, ''What Happened to You?'', was written by Mike Hugg (of Manfred Mann) and La Frenais, and was performed by Hugg's session band under the name ''Highly Likely''. It made the lower reaches of the UK Top 40 in 1974. Mike Hugg also wrote the theme tune to the 1976 film, entitled ''Remember When''.
The complete first and second series (including the Christmas special) are now available in the UK on Region 2 DVD.
★ James Bolam (Terry Collier)
★ Rodney Bewes (Bob Ferris)
★ Brigit Forsyth (Thelma Chambers: Bob's fiancée)
★ Sheila Fearn (Audrey: Terry's slightly older sister)
1. 'Strangers on a Train' - The duo are reunited by chance aboard a homeward bound train.
2. 'Home Is The Hero' - Terry finds it hard to adjust to everyday life in the 1970s.
3. 'Cold Feet' - Due to a misunderstanding, Terry causes havoc between Bob and Thelma, leading Bob to get cold feet about the wedding.
4. 'Moving On' - A miserable Terry decides to go round the world with Hughie McClaren, an old army friend
5. 'I'll Never Forget Whatshername' - Terry, now settled back home again, looks up some of his old flames. His lack of success with them makes him self-pitying, and Bob smug, until a suspicion arises that Terry may once have had a drunken fling with Thelma.
6. 'Birthday Boy' - A surprise birthday party for Terry goes predictably wrong, when someone else is accidentally invited to the party instead of him. Terry's big mouth later runs away with him.
7. 'No Hiding Place' - The lads try to avoid learning the result of an England football match before the TV highlights later that evening. Brian Flint (Brian Glover) tries to spoil it for them in order to win a bet. Flint bets them a total of £10 that they won't get through the day without hearing the result. They get to the TV highlights none the wiser about the score except Terry glancing a newspaper stall saying "England F...." Flint then barges in to Bob's house, and angry Terry pays him off with £10 so he'll leave. The match though turns out to have been postponed because of a waterlogged pitch...
This episode was remade by Ant & Dec for ITV in 2002, and featured Rodney Bewes as a newspaper vendor.
8. 'Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?' - Terry joins Bob and Thelma at a posh dinner party.
9. 'Storm In A Tea Chest' - Thelma hypocritically forces Bob to throw out his childhood junk.
10. 'The Old Magic' - At a fancy restaurant, the lads test out whether they can still 'pull' or not.......and end up with someone they certainly didn't expect.
11. 'Countdown' - The duo get set for Bob's wedding, and we meet Thelma's dad George (Bill Owen better known as "Compo"), a staunchly working-class builder.
12. 'Boys Night In' - The night before the wedding. Bob refuses to have an old-fashioned stag night, preferring cocoa and Ludo. Terry tries to get him in the party mood nonetheless.
13. 'End Of An Era' - Bob and Thelma finally marry. Things will never be the same again: old ways, old days, gone for ever... Or are they?
14. 'Absent Friends' - Terry looks after Bob's house while he's on honeymoon, and romances Thelma's younger sister Susan. This picks up some of the threads from the episode "The Old Magic".
15. 'Heart To Heart' - Bob and Thelma return home, and Susan leaves Terry to return to Canada.
16. 'The Ant And The Grasshopper' - A run-down Bob grows increasingly tired of funding Terry's lazy lifestyle. There's no dialogue in this episode for the first three minutes, which is unusual. A ''Slade'' song can be heard in this montage though, the only occasion an original song was ever used in the show.
17. 'One For The Road' - Bob is caught drink-driving and Terry, in the same cell for football hooliganism, attempts to help him out.
18. 'The Great Race' - The lads relive their active youth with a crooked bicycle race to Berwick-upon-Tweed and back.
19. 'Some Day We'll Laugh About This' - Terry romances Bob's bored neighbour while Bob and Thelma go skiing. Also features a cheeky milkman called Les (Tony Haygarth) and people falling through floors.
20. 'In Harm's Way' - Terry reluctantly takes a job as a hospital porter and causes a series of disasters. The victim of every one of them is Bob.
21. 'Affairs And Relations' - Our heroes, gone fishing, catch Thelma's dad 'playing away' with his blonde secretary in a country hotel. Then Thelma turns up unexpectedly and thinks the blonde is there with Bob.
22. 'The Expert' - The follow-up to "Affairs And Relations", with Thelma leaving Bob.
23. 'Between Ourselves' - Terry moves in with a depressed Bob, and amusingly plays housewife in Thelma's absence.
24. 'The Go-Between' - Terry tries to fix things up between Bob and Thelma, but Bob ends up with his head in a gas oven. This brings to a conclusion the 'on/off' storyline which began in "Affairs and Relations".
25. 'Conduct Unbecoming' - Both lads end up in court on separate assault charges involving the same local ruffian, Duggie Scafe (Alun Armstrong). Armstrong also plays Terry's milkman in the 1976 movie, although it is unclear whether that character is supposed to be Scafe.
26. 'The Shape Of Things To Come' - Frightened that Terry is ruining his life, just like Terry's recently-deceased Uncle Jacob did to others, Bob decides to sever their ties. As ever, he finds he can't escape, marking a down-beat and low-key finish to the season.
In 1974, all 26 episodes from series 1 and 2 were repeated on BBC 1 in a continuous six month run which culminated in a new Christmas Special.
27. 'Christmas Special' - Amongst other adventures including Terry passing his driving test and Bob growing a 'scary' beard, Terry takes Bob and Thelma to a Christmas fancy dress party as their cab driver. (First broadcast: 24 December 1974)
The 13 episodes of series 1 were adapted for the radio, using the original television cast, and were broadcast in 1975 from 30th July to 22nd October.
In 1976, a feature-length movie was released, directed by Michael Tuchner. By this time, both lads have moved house (Bob and Thelma to a detached house and Terry to a high-rise with his parents) and Terry also has a Finnish girlfriend called Christina ("Chris") (played by Mary Tamm).
The movie sees the lads lament their favourite pub getting knocked down and then moves on to a caravanning holiday farce. The fun ends with Terry and Chris splitting and Terry deciding to leave town and joining a ship's crew.
Bob and Terry sneak one last late-night drink together aboard Terry's Bahrain-bound ship in the harbour, but Terry has second thoughts the morning after and elects to stay at home. Bob, however, awakes hungover aboard the ship as it sets sail.
Ian McDiarmid, who would go on to play Palpatine/Darth Sidious in four Star Wars movies, made his film debut here, playing a vicar. Future 1980s sitcom icons Vicki Michelle and Linda Robson also appear. Michelle had already featured, as a different character, in the second season of the BBC show.
Any future plans were never formally announced, but if they existed they were scuppered by Bewes and Bolam's subsequent falling-out.
★ In 1997, British band Snuff included a cover of the series' theme tune, titled ''Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?'' on their fifth album, ''Potatoes And Melons Wholesale Prices Straight From The Lock Up''. It is available for free download at Fat Wreck Chords. The band plays the song at most of their gigs.
★ Also, in 2004, British garage/punk rock revivalists The Libertines' second album included a song named "What Became of the Likely Lads?"
★ List of British sitcoms turned into films
★ British Film Institute Screen Online
★ The Likely Lads (1976) IMDB entry
'''Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?''' was a hit British sitcom broadcast between January 1973 and December 1974, as the colour sequel to the mid-1960s hit ''The Likely Lads''. It was created and written, as was its predecessor, by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. There were 27 television episodes in all over two seasons, including a 45-minute Christmas finale.
The cast later reunited for a BBC Radio adaptation that ran from July to October 1975.
A popular movie spin-off was made in 1976, around the time of the movie's release; however, the two stars Rodney Bewes and James Bolam fell out over a misunderstanding involving the press and have not spoken since. This long-suspected situation was finally confirmed by Bewes while promoting his 2005 autobiography.
| Contents |
| The series |
| Regular cast |
| Episode guide |
| Season 1 |
| Season 2 |
| The radio series |
| Feature film |
| In popular culture |
| See also |
| External links |
The series
The show followed the resumed friendship, after five years apart, of two young working-class men, Bob Ferris (Bewes) and Terry Collier (Bolam).
Set in North East England, assumed to be on Tyneside but never really confirmed, the humour was based on the tension between fresh-from-the-army Terry's laziness and Bob's progression to the middle class via his new white-collar job, suburban home and impending marriage to his childhood sweetheart Thelma Chambers (Brigit Forsyth).
Since the end of the original ''The Likely Lads'', in 1966, Bob has left factory life behind for an office job with his future father-in-law's building firm. However, what Bob actually does is not a major factor in the show; more important is the fact that he is now a white-collar worker, joining badminton clubs and attending dinner parties and so on.
Terry sees his extended army experience as lending him moral superiority over Bob. Nonetheless, he finds it hard to adjust to all the changes that have occurred in the five years he has been away. As implied by the show's title, the series plays on a feeling of nostalgia for the days of the lads' innocent and reckless youth.
The word "likely" in the title, which in some northern English dialects means "likeable", in this context means "likely to succeed", because in the 1960s series the two lads were on the brink of making their way in the world.
The show's catchy theme song, ''What Happened to You?'', was written by Mike Hugg (of Manfred Mann) and La Frenais, and was performed by Hugg's session band under the name ''Highly Likely''. It made the lower reaches of the UK Top 40 in 1974. Mike Hugg also wrote the theme tune to the 1976 film, entitled ''Remember When''.
The complete first and second series (including the Christmas special) are now available in the UK on Region 2 DVD.
Regular cast
★ James Bolam (Terry Collier)
★ Rodney Bewes (Bob Ferris)
★ Brigit Forsyth (Thelma Chambers: Bob's fiancée)
★ Sheila Fearn (Audrey: Terry's slightly older sister)
Episode guide
Season 1
1. 'Strangers on a Train' - The duo are reunited by chance aboard a homeward bound train.
2. 'Home Is The Hero' - Terry finds it hard to adjust to everyday life in the 1970s.
3. 'Cold Feet' - Due to a misunderstanding, Terry causes havoc between Bob and Thelma, leading Bob to get cold feet about the wedding.
4. 'Moving On' - A miserable Terry decides to go round the world with Hughie McClaren, an old army friend
5. 'I'll Never Forget Whatshername' - Terry, now settled back home again, looks up some of his old flames. His lack of success with them makes him self-pitying, and Bob smug, until a suspicion arises that Terry may once have had a drunken fling with Thelma.
6. 'Birthday Boy' - A surprise birthday party for Terry goes predictably wrong, when someone else is accidentally invited to the party instead of him. Terry's big mouth later runs away with him.
7. 'No Hiding Place' - The lads try to avoid learning the result of an England football match before the TV highlights later that evening. Brian Flint (Brian Glover) tries to spoil it for them in order to win a bet. Flint bets them a total of £10 that they won't get through the day without hearing the result. They get to the TV highlights none the wiser about the score except Terry glancing a newspaper stall saying "England F...." Flint then barges in to Bob's house, and angry Terry pays him off with £10 so he'll leave. The match though turns out to have been postponed because of a waterlogged pitch...
This episode was remade by Ant & Dec for ITV in 2002, and featured Rodney Bewes as a newspaper vendor.
8. 'Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?' - Terry joins Bob and Thelma at a posh dinner party.
9. 'Storm In A Tea Chest' - Thelma hypocritically forces Bob to throw out his childhood junk.
10. 'The Old Magic' - At a fancy restaurant, the lads test out whether they can still 'pull' or not.......and end up with someone they certainly didn't expect.
11. 'Countdown' - The duo get set for Bob's wedding, and we meet Thelma's dad George (Bill Owen better known as "Compo"), a staunchly working-class builder.
12. 'Boys Night In' - The night before the wedding. Bob refuses to have an old-fashioned stag night, preferring cocoa and Ludo. Terry tries to get him in the party mood nonetheless.
13. 'End Of An Era' - Bob and Thelma finally marry. Things will never be the same again: old ways, old days, gone for ever... Or are they?
Season 2
14. 'Absent Friends' - Terry looks after Bob's house while he's on honeymoon, and romances Thelma's younger sister Susan. This picks up some of the threads from the episode "The Old Magic".
15. 'Heart To Heart' - Bob and Thelma return home, and Susan leaves Terry to return to Canada.
16. 'The Ant And The Grasshopper' - A run-down Bob grows increasingly tired of funding Terry's lazy lifestyle. There's no dialogue in this episode for the first three minutes, which is unusual. A ''Slade'' song can be heard in this montage though, the only occasion an original song was ever used in the show.
17. 'One For The Road' - Bob is caught drink-driving and Terry, in the same cell for football hooliganism, attempts to help him out.
18. 'The Great Race' - The lads relive their active youth with a crooked bicycle race to Berwick-upon-Tweed and back.
19. 'Some Day We'll Laugh About This' - Terry romances Bob's bored neighbour while Bob and Thelma go skiing. Also features a cheeky milkman called Les (Tony Haygarth) and people falling through floors.
20. 'In Harm's Way' - Terry reluctantly takes a job as a hospital porter and causes a series of disasters. The victim of every one of them is Bob.
21. 'Affairs And Relations' - Our heroes, gone fishing, catch Thelma's dad 'playing away' with his blonde secretary in a country hotel. Then Thelma turns up unexpectedly and thinks the blonde is there with Bob.
22. 'The Expert' - The follow-up to "Affairs And Relations", with Thelma leaving Bob.
23. 'Between Ourselves' - Terry moves in with a depressed Bob, and amusingly plays housewife in Thelma's absence.
24. 'The Go-Between' - Terry tries to fix things up between Bob and Thelma, but Bob ends up with his head in a gas oven. This brings to a conclusion the 'on/off' storyline which began in "Affairs and Relations".
25. 'Conduct Unbecoming' - Both lads end up in court on separate assault charges involving the same local ruffian, Duggie Scafe (Alun Armstrong). Armstrong also plays Terry's milkman in the 1976 movie, although it is unclear whether that character is supposed to be Scafe.
26. 'The Shape Of Things To Come' - Frightened that Terry is ruining his life, just like Terry's recently-deceased Uncle Jacob did to others, Bob decides to sever their ties. As ever, he finds he can't escape, marking a down-beat and low-key finish to the season.
In 1974, all 26 episodes from series 1 and 2 were repeated on BBC 1 in a continuous six month run which culminated in a new Christmas Special.
27. 'Christmas Special' - Amongst other adventures including Terry passing his driving test and Bob growing a 'scary' beard, Terry takes Bob and Thelma to a Christmas fancy dress party as their cab driver. (First broadcast: 24 December 1974)
The radio series
The 13 episodes of series 1 were adapted for the radio, using the original television cast, and were broadcast in 1975 from 30th July to 22nd October.
Feature film
In 1976, a feature-length movie was released, directed by Michael Tuchner. By this time, both lads have moved house (Bob and Thelma to a detached house and Terry to a high-rise with his parents) and Terry also has a Finnish girlfriend called Christina ("Chris") (played by Mary Tamm).
The movie sees the lads lament their favourite pub getting knocked down and then moves on to a caravanning holiday farce. The fun ends with Terry and Chris splitting and Terry deciding to leave town and joining a ship's crew.
Bob and Terry sneak one last late-night drink together aboard Terry's Bahrain-bound ship in the harbour, but Terry has second thoughts the morning after and elects to stay at home. Bob, however, awakes hungover aboard the ship as it sets sail.
Ian McDiarmid, who would go on to play Palpatine/Darth Sidious in four Star Wars movies, made his film debut here, playing a vicar. Future 1980s sitcom icons Vicki Michelle and Linda Robson also appear. Michelle had already featured, as a different character, in the second season of the BBC show.
Any future plans were never formally announced, but if they existed they were scuppered by Bewes and Bolam's subsequent falling-out.
In popular culture
★ In 1997, British band Snuff included a cover of the series' theme tune, titled ''Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?'' on their fifth album, ''Potatoes And Melons Wholesale Prices Straight From The Lock Up''. It is available for free download at Fat Wreck Chords. The band plays the song at most of their gigs.
★ Also, in 2004, British garage/punk rock revivalists The Libertines' second album included a song named "What Became of the Likely Lads?"
See also
★ List of British sitcoms turned into films
External links
★ British Film Institute Screen Online
★ The Likely Lads (1976) IMDB entry
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