Rent Spring and Autumn: Series 1 (1973)
- General info
- Available formats
- All series
- Synopsis:
Not every widowed seventy-year-old is lucky enough to have a daughter willing to provide him with a home in his declining years, and not every daughter is unlucky enough to have a father as awkward, cantankerous and mischievous as Tommy Butler...Comedy veteran Jimmy Jewel stars as Tommy, a retired railway worker who goes to live with his long-suffering daughter Vera (June Barry) when his home is demolished. While his son-in-law Brian (Larry Martyn) hardly welcomes the new domestic arrangement, Tommy, having left all his old friends behind, feels particularly lost - until he strikes up an unlikely friendship with twelve-year-old tearaway Charlie Harris (Charlie Hawkins). This warm, touching sitcom was written by the hugely successful team of Vince Powell and Harry Driver, and originally ran from 1973 to 1977. This set includes the pilot play from 1972 alongside all six episodes from series one. - Actors:
- Jimmy Jewel, Charlie Hawkins, Gaye Brown, John Lyons, Larry Martyn, George Tovey, Meadows White, Gary Williams, June Barry, Jo Warne, Jimmy Gardner, William Fox, Norman Mitchell, Geoffrey Bateman, James Grout, Hilda Braid, Kathleen Harrison, Ron Hackett, James Appleby
- Directors:
- Stuart Allen, Ronnie Baxter
- Producers:
- Ronnie Baxter, Stuart Allen
- Writers:
- Harry Driver, Vince Powell
- Aka:
- Spring & Autumn
- Studio:
- Network
- Genres:
- British TV, TV Classics, TV Comedies, TV Sitcoms
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Reviews (1) of Spring and Autumn: Series 1
Spring&Autumn vs. My Old Man - Spring and Autumn: Series 1 review by AW
For the first episode of this SPRING & AUTUMN I got a complete sense of deja vu. I've recently seen SEVEN IN ONE, a series of one off short 'skits' (I suppose you call them). I thought they might be potential ideas for series....all with the venerable Ronnie Barker as the main character as the first ones were the main ideas that blossomed into his PORRIDGE and OPEN ALL HOURS. In the particular episode called MY OLD MAN Ronnie's a cantankerous old codger Sam Cobbett, a retired train driver, who's being evicted from his condemned terrace home & is supposed to go to live in a modern 70s high rise with his daughter & her husband (who really doesn't want Dad intruding on their life). Dad doesn't like or understand modern conveniences.
I found the RonnieB MY OLD MAN was later made into a 1974 series with Clive Dunn & Priscilla Morgan... also entitled MY OLD MAN.
To my surprise, and for a completely different reason, I ordered this series called SPRING AND AUTUMN (1972-1976) on CP which I only vaguely knew the premise of, as it featured Jimmy Jewel...the first episode on the disc was almost word for word the same script as MY OLD MAN.
Oh my, I thought. So they went on and did a completely different series on the same premise - a lonely old man not entirely welcome in his daughter's house? Only this time he's named Tommy and he befriends a 12 y.o. boy. All very kind and innocent as it could be in the 70s but at the end of the 2nd episode septuagenarian Tommy meets this lad, who thinks he needs to run away from home, in a bus shelter and goes off with him, arm around shoulder, to buy him a fish&chip supper. Gulp. These days it would automatically be reverse assumed to demonstrate more sinister intentions. And that's sad because the next few episodes are actually sweet and poignant, no smutty stuff, just a spring/autumn friendship of a lad growing up and an old codger blossoming as a less curmudgeonly man who thought he had nothing to look forward to in retirement, discovering many new sides to life from the lads perspective.
Episode 2 on this disc is re-filmed slightly differently in colour and setting, with the husband played by the same Larry Martyn and the daughter/wife changed to be played by June Barry.
I wasn't sure I'd like this by then, but it redeemed itself.
Give it a whirl. Classic 70s comedy.