Last of Summer Wine-Very Best of [VHS] [1973]

While some pleasures are an acquired taste, a partiality to a drop of the BBC's Last of the Summer Wine has been acquired by millions with no difficulty at all. Here are the much loved Compo, Clegg and Foggy in their picturesque Yorkshire village, unique characters brought to life by three fine character actors: Bill Owen, Michael Bates and Peter Sallis (the latter also famed as the voice of Wallace of the Wallace and Gromit animations). This is a quaint, whimsically exaggerated world, comfortably familiar, gently humorous and ever so English. There are five episodes on this "Best of" collection---"Spring Fever", "A Quiet Drink", "Three Men and a Mangle", "Who's That Dancing with Nora Batty Then?" and "The Kink in Foggy's Niblick". The first three have also appeared on collections of the same names, the fourth on Forked Lightening, the last on The Finest Vintage. Perhaps old wine is best, for only one show on the tape dates from later than 1976, while the 90s are not represented at all. Here then is an opportunity to go back to near the beginning, and sample some now mature classic years. Writer Roy Clarke's Open All Hours and Keeping Up Appearances are also available on BBC video. --Gary S. Dalkin

"It's destiny, fate that brings us together. Redundancy. They just don't care that your mother used to eat insurance men and that yours was struggling to bring you up nicely as a little poof". So says Clegg (Peter Sallis) addressing his companions, Compo (Bill Owen) and Blamire (Michael Bates), three fellows getting on in years reunited by unemployment after knowing each other all their lives in a small Yorkshire town. There's no real story to Last of the Summer Wine, simply the well-observed banter of the central trio and a gallery of eccentric supporting characters. Compo, the irreverent and scruffy "village idiot" and Clegg, the amiable working man are well-loved figures, but the middle-class Conservative Blamire, a nicely rounded portrayal by Bates, may surprise fans expecting to see Foggy (Brian Wilde), who didn't join the series until 1976. This double-video presents the six episodes of the first series, from 1973, of the longest-running comedy in British television history. It's a shame the pilot episode which introduced the characters has not been included, and that the credits have been edited out, but this is a reminder of how good Last of the Summer Wine once was, when it was new, fresh and laugh-out-loud funny. --Gary S. Dalkin