Roy Clarke On Characters

July 25, 2019

Roy Clarke On Characters

There’s not much of Roy Clarke, the writer of Last Of The Summer Wine, Keeping Up Appearances, and Open All Hours to be found on YouTube.

Here he is talking about his approach to developing sitcoms around characters.

I had a thought the other day, that if Edie in LOTSW is the prototype for Hyacinth Bucket, how many other characters did Clarke develop in LOTSW with a view to making a sitcom. Indeed, were there any backdoor pilots in the long run of that show?

I asked this on Twitter, and got some interesting responses, including this one.

Towards the end of the series there's "A Short Introduction to Cooper's Rules", which focuses almost entirely on the two policeman characters who only appear infrequently at the point you're at in the 90s.
— Chris (@tehflyingkipper) July 24, 2019

Chris helpfully and brilliant followed up with this link. It mentions that Alan JW Bell had been up to Holmfirth to shoot some test scenes with the two actors. I would love to see that, if anyone knows where to find it.

About Writing, Last Of The Summer Wine, Sitcoms

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