THE SMELL of a Friday night. John Birt’s idea of a weekend curtain-raiser and RICHARD O’SULLIVAN’s idea for a pension plan, this was superlative sitcommage and no fooling. Rich works as a none-more-80s advertising executive in none-more-80s named firm Eyecatchers (replete with huge eye logo) struggling in none-more-80s way to bring up daughter single-handedly after the premature death of his missus. Only the likes of dippy mate TIM BROOKE-TAYLOR and crotchety mother-in-law JOAN SANDERSON kept throwing a none-more-80s spanner in the works. Sublime signature tune had Peter Skellern crooning wistfully (“Sometimes it seems/she shatters my dreams…”) over plucked strings and slap bass.
Matthew Rudd
July 17, 2010 at 4:37 pm
Joanne Ridley and Joanne Campbell. Aaaaah.
Joanne Gray
February 19, 2017 at 7:54 pm
Just heard of the sad passing of Peter Skellern, aged 69.
richardpd
July 12, 2020 at 11:02 pm
I mostly remember this on a Sunday night for some reason. In spite of the various “none-more-80s” aspects the theme seemed to be a bit of a 70s holdover.
Glenn Aylett
July 13, 2020 at 10:49 am
@richardpd, Friday nights, in the era before the damned soaps took over Friday nights and put the bed the old LWT idea of a Friday night being comedy, game shows and light drama. Apart from being well written, who could seriously not watch a sitcom where Joan Sanderson does her crotchety, ultra conservative old lady act and Tim Brooke Taylor does his amusing buffoon thing, although not in a Union Jack waistcoat. Me and My Girl is deserving of a repeat.
richardpd
July 13, 2020 at 10:38 pm
I checked the dates on the Wikipedia & the 3rd series was on a Sunday.
By ITV standards it was quite good from what I remember, funny enough to keep your attention for 30 minutes without being too demanding.
It was while this was being made that ITV had the debacle with Albion Market, with LWT & some of the other regions refusing to show it on a Friday night.
Droogie
October 16, 2021 at 6:28 pm
I remember having a bit of a teen crush on Joanne Campbell who played secretary Liz on the show. I googled to see what she’s doing these days and was saddened to see that she passed away in 2002. She was only 38.
Andrew Barton
October 17, 2021 at 12:20 pm
One of her final roles was on the kids series Alphabet Castle, one of the first shows from Carlton Television.
Ian Sachs, who wrote Rod n Emu with Rod Hull, also featured on that show as the character Gobbledygook.
Glenn Aylett
October 17, 2021 at 10:41 am
ITV, after a long period of sitcom flops, seemed to hit gold in the mid eighties. Duty Free was nearly as popular as Coronation St, Me And My Girl livened up Friday nights, The Kit Curran Radio Show was more like something Channel 4 would do, and Never The Twain was in its imperial phase( the episode with the dodgy tickets for Twickenham is a classic). Also comedy dramas like Minder and Auf Wiedersehen Pet are well loved now and were attracting 16 million viewers.
Richardpd
October 17, 2021 at 1:44 pm
Shelly was another rare ITV sitcom that somehow struck gold around the same time.
At one time it was going to move to Channel 4, but ITV managed to keep hold of it.
Andrew Barton
October 17, 2021 at 6:34 pm
Shelley I recall also starred Belinda Sinclair, who later on joined the cast of Family Affairs following the infamous revamp which saw the original family written off. Interestingly when a new producer came into Family Affairs later, Belinda Sinclair’s character was written out.
There was a revival series called of Shelley towards the end of Thames’s time on the ITV network. Belinda Sinclair was not part of it.