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Jayne Dawson: End of the Wine, bye to Sun Hill
IT'S been a brutal few days in television world with the axe falling on two of the longest running shows ever to be screened.
Last of the Summer Wine succumbed at the weekend after 37 years and then, barely giving viewers time to dry their tears, The Bill suffered the same fate.
I can't tell a lie though, losing The Bill wasn't a devastating blow for me personally, not any kind of blow actually because I've never watched a single episode.
I know! It's weird, isn't it? Another item to add to the list of Things I've Never Done But Probably Should Have, which so far consists of: never eaten a takeaway kebab, never watched an episode of Emmerdale. And now there's The Bill.
You're right, there is a bit of fledgling anti-ITV theme there, but that's what happens when you grow up in a household where the commercial channel is deemed the work of the devil and therefore banned – you feel a bit scared about watching it.
Once the idea that everything in life is OK apart from watching ITV and smoking cigarettes is lodged in your brain by a parent with firm attitudes, it's pretty hard to dislodge it.
It means that an ITV programme is always a conscious choice, along the lines of "I'm a grown-up, I'll do this if I want to, and my mum can't tell me off" and never watched because it just happens to be on when you walked into the room, because ITV is never on when I walk into the room in my house.
But really, that's beside the point. I might not have watched an episode of The Bill myself but I would defend anyone's right to have watch it during any of its almost 26 years.
And anyway I must have seen an accidental few minutes at someone else's house because I know that actress who used to be in EastEnders was in it, Roberta Taylor, and I liked her a lot.
But the point is that both The Bill and Last of the Summer Wine were well-loved landmarks in the television landscape, and they should have been allowed to remain.
Axeing them is a loss in the same way that losing our old pubs is a loss – personally I never was much of a pub person, wouldn't have dreamed of stepping inside most of them and saw them as mostly male domains anyway – but it was still a sadness to me when they started disappearing faster than I could blink.
It meant a traditional aspect of British life was ending and the street furniture around us was changing as those old pub signs disappeared, like lights being switched off.
Pub closures were down to dwindling audiences, basically we deserted them no matter how much we protested our love, loyalty and affection – but both these axed programmes had millions of fans still.
So I watched the final episode of Last of The Summer Wine, and felt sad that its fans would not hear the poignant music and see the lovely views of Holmfirth open on a fresh episode again.
The surprising thing about Last of the Summer Wine was that, though it was a programme of pure nostalgia, when it began it was in some ways ahead of its time.
Nowadays, surrounded on all sides by the ageing baby boomer, we all know that getting older doesn't mean less fun.
As those born at the height of the post-war baby boom reach their sixties, we are fully aware that reaching what was once seen as old age does not mean that life has to lose its allure.
Those lucky enough to have retired with decent pensions are not thinking about the end of their lives at all, merely planning a new phase involving less work, fewer responsibilities and, in the case of a surprising number of them, more motorbikes.
But back in 1973 when Last of the Summer Wine began, the idea that getting older could be about having fun was a new one.
At the time Peter Sallis, one of the few actors to have made it all the way though from the beginning to the end of Summer Wine was – whisper it – only 52, and hardly an old man, but that's acting for you.
Back in the beginning, the show was a much gentler, less cartoonish, version of itself than it became. But though it became completely formulaic, it was a programme that produced some inspired characters, including a whole pack of delightful, strong northern women.
Women who in their own elderly, northern way were every bit as strong as the women from, say, Sex and the City. To be honest, I think an afternoon over a cup of tea and a scone with Thora Hird, Kathy Staff and gang, complaining about their men leaving their muddy imprint all over the house or all going out for a drive, headscarves firmly in place, would have been a lot more of a laugh than any cocktail hour with Carrie and her girlfriends.
We will miss all that and I think the end of Last of the Summer Wine is a mistake and a shame – the good news is that the repeats will keep one of the other channels busy for a lifetime, and maybe we will get to enjoy some of the early programmes, when the humour was more subtle and the characters were, well, young.
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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