Porridge - The Christmas Specials [1975] [1976] [DVD]

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The Doctor is even less forgiving than Mackay, proud to have the lowest patient admission rate in the prison system and having no time for “malingerers” like Norman Stanley Fletcher. Fletcher fires the gun in the air to prove his point, and the shot hits the ceiling, showering them with plaster, meaning that the gun was in fact loaded. Production [ edit ] Development [ edit ] The frontage of the former St Albans Prison was used as the fictitious H.

Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais also wrote another of my favourites, the Likely Lads Christmas special. Porridge is a sitcom which aired from 1974 to 1977, starring Ronnie Barker and Richard Beckinsale as two inmates at the fictional HMP Slade in Cumberland. One of the episodes was "Prisoner and Escort", written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais about a newly sentenced habitual criminal, Norman Stanley Fletcher (Barker), being escorted to prison by two warders: the timid Barrowclough ( Brian Wilde) and the stern Mackay ( Fulton Mackay). Loftus Road, the home of Queens Park Rangers Football Club, was briefly featured in "Happy Release", standing in for Elland Road in Leeds.It looked back on Fletcher's life and how the various inmates of Slade had fared 25 years after Fletcher's release from prison.

As Fletcher points out, the Christmas choir only exists so that it can drown out the sound of Tommy Slocombe's tunnelling, his escape attempt scheduled for Christmas Eve. For series 2 and 3, it is broken down by sentence into three sections and has an echo effect added to increase the gravity of the 'judge's' words, with each of the three sentences followed by shots of locking various doors around the 'prison' with key locking sound effects. Godber, with his innocent nature, likes the idea of Christmas, but Fletcher tells him that Christmas in prison is little different to any other day.Meanwhile Fletch, has plans of his own for Christmas, namely getting himself a stay in the prison hospital for Christmas. He has also had a short story published in Master Pieces: Misadventures in Space and Time a charity anthology about the renegade Time Lord.

TV series and specials CHRISTMAS 2020 is not long away and people can hardly wait for the year to be at an end. Richard Beckinsale reprised his role as Godber, now the fiancé of Fletcher's daughter Ingrid (Patricia Brake), and the couple married in the final episode.The Desperate Hours” is a less festively-themed, more seriously-styled but still extremely funny episode. Following the success of the initial episode, in October 2016 the BBC announced that a full series of six episodes had been commissioned, with production to start in January 2017. Fletcher doesn't want to spend Christmas in his cell, and through a convoluted series of events involving the building of a tunnel, he ends up in hospital for Christmas with his feet up in a quiet, comfortable private room. With this information, Harry Grout requests that Fletcher picks up an important object from a nurse at the hospital. There are some golden moments in the episode that show Porridge at its very best, not least the sneaky pickpocketing of both Mackay and Barraclough as they break up the conspiratorial carolling.