Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?

1973-1974. BBC1. Follow-up of the BBC2 series The Likely Lads (1964-1966). Starring James Bolam and Rodney Bewes. Both the original show and its sequel were created by scriptwriters Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement. Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? comprises 26 television episodes which were broadcast over two seasons. The last episode was aired on Christmas 1974.

Critics say that the series was of notable significance as it raised issues of greater relevance to the audience than was attempted by virtually any other sitcom of the time (Pickering 285). Explicitly, it excelled in the comic exploration of significant changes in the class system in Britain during the 1970s.

The Series and its Themes

The Likely Lads is set in 1960s Newcastle, shaped by industry and a large working class, where the audience follows the drinking practices and wooing efforts of factory workers Bob Ferris (Rodney Bewes) and Terry Collier (James Bolam). In the first series, Bob and Terry were basically the same in what they wanted with equal positions in their jobs.

The series’ successor Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? picks up on that basic theme but adds the feature of passing time. When Terry returns from his five years’ service in the army, he finds Bob at the verge of marrying middle-class Thelma Chambers (Bridgit Forsyth). This marriage will see Bob leaving his working-class identity and immerse himself in bourgeois respectability. Terry opposes the new lifestyle and social rituals of Bob and his (later) wife with his seductive practices of drinking, gambling, and roughness. This recurrent intrusion into the stable home of the couple highlights the tension of anti-bourgeois resentments and the new-middle-class nuclear family as a model of stability.

Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? underlines the nostalgia for the values of the old north and pushes forward the theme of two friends who try to keep up their friendship in changing times. Both Terry and Bob try to adapt to the realities of life while they are confronted with determining choices that lead them to different stages in male life narratives.

Sources

Mills, Brett. The Sitcom. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009.

Pickering, David. “Bolam, James (1938-).” Encyclopedia of Television. Ed. Horace Newcomb. New York: Taylor and Francis 2004. 284-286.

“Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?” BBC. [<http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/whateverhappened/>].

Williams, Paul. “Class, Nostalgia and Newcastle: Contested Space in The Likely Lads.” Don’t Look Now: British Cinema in the 1970s. Ed. Paul Newland. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010. 187-198.