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You’re Only Young Twice

EXTREMELY ROTTEN ITV sitcom that managed to stink up the schedules for four years. Easy laughs were accrued from old folks home setting – The Paradise Lodge – home to PEGGY MOUNT, playing Peggy Mount, and PAT COOMBS, as her weak-willed stooge Cissie. Dismal. Creators Pam Valentine and Michael Ashton went on to inflict THAT’S MY BOY and MY HUSBAND AND I on an ungrateful nation.

14 Comments

14 Comments

  1. Glenn A

    June 18, 2017 at 4:41 pm

    One of the worst sitcoms ever, although the term ” rotten ITV sitcom” could apply to most of their comedy in the seventies and eighties. You’re Only Young Twice was something my grandparents enjoyed and I couldn’t get out of the room fast enough. However, it was art compared to Michael Crawford’s post Ave Em outing, Chalk and Cheese, where he played a foul mouthed layabout( extremely badly), which I’d say was the worst sitcom I’ve ever seen.

    • Jacob

      August 20, 2017 at 12:52 am

      How about Mixed Blessings, Duck Patrol, Pay And Display, Selwyn and the classic that was Don’t Drink The Water. Dire doesn’t quite cover it.

  2. Enoch Sneed

    July 7, 2017 at 11:36 am

    I love that comment, Glenn A, there was so much dross posing as comedy on ITV at that time. Among the series I rememeber (and wish I didn’t): Alcock and Gander (Beryl Reid and Richard O’Sullivan, now on Network DVD, amazingly!); The Trouble With You, Lilian (Dandy Nichols and Patricia Hayes as two old dears, the bossy one and the underdog); Kindly Leave the Kerb (Peter Jones and Peter Butterworth as struggling street entertainer and manager), and the never-to-be-forgotten In For A Penny (Bob Todd), the only sitcom set in a public lav – I wonder why?

    • Glenn A

      July 7, 2017 at 2:35 pm

      OK, Enoch, you’ve set the ball rolling with a list of terrible ITV sitcoms from the late seventies and early eighties. How about Room Service, a totally unfunny sitcom about a five star hotel that looked like a hostel for the homeless due to the low budget? Michael Crawford’s effort I’ve already mentioned and there are bound to be others that tended to last one series on Monday nights and were never seen again as they were so bad.

  3. Richard16378

    July 7, 2017 at 6:40 pm

    I’ve never been able to work out why ITV have had such a problem with sitcoms over the years.

  4. Glenn A

    July 8, 2017 at 1:22 pm

    @ Richard 16378, the problem was the BBC had the best scriptwriters, and also ITV was hobbled by having a commercial break in the middle of their sitcoms which meant they lost momentum. Mind you, I suppose if You’re Only Young Twice was on BBC1, it would still be terrible due to the awful scripts, and also the BBC had quite a few comedy rotters at the time among its greats. ( Care to remember the twee, middle class tripe like Terry and June and Don’t Wait Up).

    • THX 1139

      July 9, 2017 at 2:02 am

      Terry and June gave us (1) June Whitfield as a punk, and (2) the Smith and Jones sketch Achmed and June, where Mel Smith hilariously demonstrated a brilliant Terry Scott impersonation. So not all bad. Also, Don’t Wait Up had a great, breezy theme tune.

      • Glenn A

        July 11, 2017 at 10:19 am

        She played a punk in 1985, five years after it had gone out of fashion. Yet the excellent theme tune saved Terry and June from being a complete write off, with the comedy titles in the garden. ( Don’t quote this as gospel, but didn’t Man About The House start this trend, and the titles were very un PC, with a camera focussing on Tessa Wyatt’s tight jeans).

  5. Richard16378

    July 9, 2017 at 11:01 am

    Terry & June also has the TV Cream favourite scene with beefburgers on a record player for some reason.

    I thought Don’t Wait Up was quite good, with Nigel Havers showing his brand of suave to the masses,

  6. Glenn Aylett

    April 28, 2018 at 10:16 am

    Uou’re Only Young Twice is currently being repeated on ITV 3 and is even worse now than it was 40 years ago, made worse by the sets that look like they’re made out of paper. I survived five minutes and switched over to The Avengers, which never seems to date.

  7. Glenn Aylett

    October 27, 2018 at 2:41 pm

    Another stinker from ITV’s long list of bad sitcoms from the seventies and eighties and not mentioned on here, Young At Heart, a tedious sitcom starring John Mills as a retired factory worker from Stoke on Trent. Followed Coronation St on Mondays and probably inherited the Northern pensioner audience from CS, as to anyone under 65, Young At Heart was like pulling teeth as the humour was all about bus oasses and the state pension.

    • George White

      March 4, 2020 at 8:52 pm

      I suppose it was the Vicious of its day, or maybe Hold the Sunset.
      Iconic internationally known British STAR does a cheap, unmemorable little sitcom.
      Been watching a lot of Mills recently, and seeing him in flat cap and scarf as “Northern grandad”, probably the lowpoint of his career, and he did a giallo. Then again, Mills’ career is full of “I’ll take the dosh” style jobs, even probably moreso than Olivier. Cannon’s Sahara, A Woman of Substance, Love Boat and Hotel, Dr. Strange, the lead in a TV western – Dundee and the Culhane

      • Glenn Aylett

        March 5, 2020 at 8:53 pm

        Stephen Berkoff, who classes himself above programmes he calls rubbish and is always moaning about lowbrow films and television, might not like to be reminded about how his stern looks have made him a fair amount of money over the years in such high art productions Octopussy. He might sneer at such things now, but his portrayal of a deranged Russian general in Octopussy was the best thing in the film.

  8. Sidney Balmoral James

    March 4, 2020 at 8:39 pm

    I believe that life imitated art eventually and Peggy and Pat spent their final years in the same retirement home, Denville Lodge. Although by all accounts Peggy Mount was nothing like her battleaxe persona in real life so I don’t expect she spent her time ordering Pat Coombs about.

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