We've recently been discussing somewhere else the rather general feeling that even one of the best-loved sitcoms ever, "Only Fools and Horses", had grown rather long in the tooth, in its later years.

But how do you end a sitcom, especially such a popular one, when that dreaded moment eventually comes, and it does, even for the best?

I think we've seen them all, from a rather painful dragging and desperate scraping the bottom of the ideas barrel, to abrupt ends in media res while they're still young and fresh, which can be even more painful, see "Fawlty Towers" or "The Young Ones"...

But killing your main character must take the biscuit... I still can't get over what happened to poor Victor Meldrew, you know, "One Foot in the Grave"...

The title could have been a bad omen, but I doubt David Renwick, the writer, meant to kill his character from the start, and I'm still wondering what got into him when writing that last episode, with its sombre mood and that weird ending... did she...?

Maybe he feared Victor would come back haunting him for years to come, by popular demand which he couldn't resist, and thought he couldn't deliver any more good material, so he made sure the character COULDN'T come back, but still, that's no way to end a comedy series, if you ask me...

It's silly, I know, over-sentimental, perhaps bordering on the soap-attitude, but you get to love your characters, don't you? Even Victor Meldrew grows on you... after a fashion...

The series might be over by a long time, and not coming back for sure, but I like to think Del Boy Trotter is still wheeling and dealing somewhere in South London, grey in his hair but lovely-jubbly (well, David Jason surely still is... ), this time next year he'll be a millionaire, you know it makes sense, and Basil Fawlty is managing a Retirement Home somewhere (John Cleese, if you hear me... ), and Sid Abbot, 96, is having troubles with his great-grandchildren, who want to have their nose pierced and their hair dyed green, and he still can't tell who's the boy and who's the girl...

Even the Young Ones, who had purportedly died as well...

Cliff! Cliff!

... going through a huge Cliff Richard's poster, over a cliff (hee... hee...) and plunging to their apparent deaths in a double-decker bus, might really have escaped their dreadful fate, thanks to the surreal ambience of the whole series... after all, Vyvyan had survived a pickaxe through his head as well as an actual decapitation, in previous episodes...

I can easily imagine them today, middle-aged outcasts, still sharing a grotty flat, almost unchanged, except for thinning and greying hair, and a more or less slight hint of a beer-belly... OK, perhaps a SHOUT rather than a hint of that , but not having changed an iota of their attitude, and why would they? They're not even stereotypes, they're archetypes by now... don't we all know at least ONE Young One to these days? I should know, I'm one... but I won't tell you which one...

Finally, I'd like to mention at least one sitcom which had a "proper" and well-thought ending, the almost unbelievably silly "'Allo 'Allo", one of the greatest exercises in style TV have ever allowed, the style being rather obviously that of the running gag... to paroxysm...

I'm so grateful to the writers for letting me know what happened to the Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies and all those sausages, and where Rene's love life would eventually go... and the recent documentary/mockumentary "The Return of 'Allo 'Allo" was a very well-received bonus, by all means get it if you love this series... a bit of a forbidden pleasure, I must admit (it's just TOO silly! ), but a pleasure nevertheless...

In the end, whatever you do, DON'T kill your characters, it's a bloody shame...

"No, bloody isn't bloody swearing, bloody hell!"

                    (Owen, a.k.a. Trigger elsewhere, in "The Vicar of Dibley")
 


Cheers!

Got a bit carried away, haven't I? But you're the one who prompted me to writing on this subject...


'Allo 'Allo is definitely an acquired taste, I'd say, at some point you get an urge to see how long they could keep the various "Lissen very carefully, I shall say zis only once", "You stupid woman", "It is I... Leclerc", "Good moaning" etc. going AND still make you laugh, rather than making you feel like you'd want to stuff cheese in your ears...

And they succeded to the very end, as far as I'm concerned, it's almost magic, you know perfectly well not only what's going to happen next, but also what they're going to say, you can chorus with them, and still they do crack you up... well, me at least...

"Are you ribbing the bonk?"
"Yes, yes, we're robbing the bank, now shut up!"

Ah, and there's a nice theme tune there, too...

How it ended? Well, the War ended, that was in fact a rather easy way out for the writers, there, the advantage of writing period pieces...

And all the characters lived happily ever after, as I like it, but I won't tell you who ended up with the Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies... too many spoilers already in this post, you'll have to check for yourself...

You might want to check the above quoted "The Return of 'Allo 'Allo", apart from telling you what they all did after the war, there's ample recaps of the whole story in there, if you don't feel like checking the later seasons.

Ah, and... Tooting, eh? I'll have to check that series, but any personal relation with the actual place? I'm an ex Battersea denizen meself... South London Rules!

Look at me bumping a thread from the ancient past! (I re-discovered it thanks to google!) But it made me think about how badly the longest running sitcom ever finished! The Last Of The Summer Wine really did just ebb away didn't it? Auntie Beeb really dropped the ball with this one, They could have had a proper ending with one final Christmas special