The last time I did an article on On the Buses, it was about
the final two episodes of the series. By the time the series ended, that show
had really run out of steam. Two of the main actors had left; Reg Varney and
Michael Robbins were already gone. It was a very quiet end to a great series. I
am happy to say, that this article focuses on two holiday episodes of On the
Buses during its heyday. These episodes are from Series four and Series Five
and this is amongst the great seasons of this series.
Christmas Duty 25.12.71
This is first Christmas episode of On the Buses and it
focuses on Stan and Jack having to work on Christmas day. Originally they
weren’t scheduled to do so. As they pull into the bus station with their bus on
Christmas Eve, Blakey watched them get off the bus and the two guys are
unloading all sorts of shopping. Stan and Jack used the bus to stop off and do
some Christmas shopping for themselves. Of course that is against the
regulations and Blakey is about to write them up but Stan soon turns Blakey’s
attention to some of the stuff he bought including a remote controlled bus
which eventually breaks Blakey’s gift to his mum. Blakey soon gets the better
of Stan and Jack as they are the backups to a couple of employees who aren’t
able to work Christmas because of the flu.
This change in plans also affects the Butler household. They
always have their Christmas dinner at 2pm but because Stan now has to go into
work and by the time he gets off work, he will have to walk home. Ironically,
no buses will be running at the time! This means they can’t have Christmas
dinner until 4pm. However, will the turkey last that long? The good news is
that Olive’s husband Arthur has a motorbike who can run up to the bus depot and
pick Stan up after work. The bad news is that by the time Arthur needs to leave
to pick Stan up, he is completely and utterly drunk. The good news is that
Olive can drive to pick up Stan. The bad news is that Olive can’t drive. This
doesn’t stop her and the whole family including Stan’s mum going out to get
Stan. A harrowing drive to the bus station ensues….
Back at the bus depot, Blakey fixed the tea pot for his mum
and is about to leave. Jack and Stan are waiting for Arthur to pick them up and
he is late. As they start to get annoyed, they see Arthur’s bike but they also notice
that Olive is driving (not Arthur) and coming at them fast! They dive out of the way, as she drives past
also nearly knocking over Blakey who drops his mother’s tea cup which
completely smashes to the ground. Finally, Olive stops the bike, more like ramming
into one of the buses in the depot. Based on how they are all laid out on the
floor, it is amazing any of them weren’t killed. The bike is seriously damaged
and Stan, Jack, and Arthur set about to try and fix it. This will take hours. Meanwhile,
back out the house the turkey starts to burn and serious pillows of smoke start
coming out of the oven. A passing police officer notices the smoke and calls
the local fire brigade. The fire brigade come out, breaks a window and starts
squirting fluid into the house to put out the fire. Funny enough, this is the
second holiday themed series I watched in December where the kitchen starts on
fire! The first is here.
Finally, the Butlers and Arthur get home, hours after
leaving and very, very tired. Mum is worried about the turkey being in the oven
for so long but when they get in, they don’t smell anything. But when they get
into the kitchen, the room is full of nothing but white fluffy foam. When they
pull out the turkey from the oven, it is completely burned. As they try to
figure out what happened, the police officer stops in to let them know what
happened. He also gives them a nice little warning that not everyone can be
like them and be off all day to enjoy Christmas. Some people, like the police
officer, has to work on Christmas!
This episode is in black & white. This is not because it
once existed in colour and was lost and all we have is a black & white
telerecording. Even though the series had been in colour since Series Three in
1970, there was something that happened in late 1970 and 1971 that would change
that. It was called the ITV colour strike. Basically, this was a strike by
television technicians who wanted a pay rise. While this was being figured out,
the technicians refused to work with colour television equipment. All the ITV
companies including London Weekend Television which made On the Buses, invested
a lot of money into colour television equipment. The new cameras had three tubes
for colour and one monochrome tube. All the technicians had to do was simply
turn the colour off the cameras. What complicated matters is that any exterior
filming would have still been colour film and they would have needed to do
their best when the film was fed through studio to completely kill all of the
colour on these film inserts. There is something crisp and engaging about
programs on black & white videotape. This episode looks great but is kind
of bittersweet since it should have been in colour. In addition to On the Buses
in my own collection, the series that had been affected by the ITV colour
strike included Upstairs, Downstairs, Timeslip, The Mind of J.G. Reader, The
Benny Hill Show, and Public Eye. Just a few months later brings us a resolution
to the ITV colour strike and another Christmas episode.
Boxing Day Social 26.12.71
Arthur is waiting at the bus depot for the arrival of his
sister Linda and his mum. They will be coming in on Stan and Jack’s bus and as
they arrive, it is pretty clear right from the start that Linda and Jack have
hit it off. Hey nonny nonny! The thing is that Arthur nor his mum have no idea
that Linda has any interest in men, drinking or let alone going to a Boxing Day
social over at the bus depot.
Back at the Butler’s house, Arthur’s mum starts laying into
Olive for not having any children. Having children would be quite a miracle
since Arthur had an operation years ago. Arthur continues to tell everyone in
the room that Linda would have no interest in Jack or going to the social.
Meanwhile in the front room of the house, Jack and Linda are having quite a
nice snog. Unfortunately for Jack, Arthur is a pretty uptight sort of person!
Arthur doesn’t even know that Linda drinks and she hides it
by telling everyone her drink is just lemon. She doesn’t tell anyone that the
one ingredient missing is vodka. At Arthur’s request, Olive joins the table
that Jack and Linda are sitting to break them up a bit. The table has a couple
rounds of drinks already at the table so they can keep drinking and Olive
pounds down Linda’s drinks thinking they are just lemon. She immediately gets
drunk…..and frisky. Things come to a head with Olive as she asks Arthur to get
her another drink only to find he had promised to buy some other (bustier!)
woman a drink. Olive flips and makes a massive scene including standing on a
chair and lifting her skirt up over her head! The best part of that scene is
Michael Robbins reaction as he can barely keep a straight face as he tries to
deliver his lines. Olive runs off to the restroom to cry, of course it’s the
men’s restroom! Finally Arthur has all he can take of Jack hitting on his
little sister. Just as Jack and Linda were going to have some private time in
one of the buses, Arthur threatens to beat Jack up so Jack hands off Linda to
Stan. Jack is pretty lame here. He doesn’t stand up for himself at all and
quickly tells Arthur that there are plenty other women at the social he can
find. That annoyed me when I watched it as I thought it was rude to Linda but
not to worry as Linda had a backup plan of her own. As Stan shows Linda the
bus, she gets frisky with him and they start going at it in the bus. Hey nonny
nonny part two! Meanwhile, Blakey is showing Arthur’s mum around and opens up
one of the doors of a bus only to find Stan and Linda making out passionately
in it.
Both of these episodes are fun. There is one thing I will never understand, how can Stan and Jack get anywhere with women? Is this some sort of fantasy land that I am watching? I understand that women can be attracted to men who may not be great looking but have a great personality but Stan and Jack are lecherous. In Christmas Duty, they are waiting outside the women’s bathroom to grab the first woman that comes out to kiss underneath the mistletoe hanging above the bathroom door. When two women come out, they just grab them. I guess the good news is the women liked it. I don’t know how, they are both frightening looking men. Now, I fully understand that the roles these two actors were playing were meant to be younger than the actors themselves. Especially Stan was meant to be between 10 to 15 years younger than he really was but I have seen science fiction that has been more believable than this. At first I couldn’t believe that Linda would have a huge crush on Jack but then it became clear. She wasn’t necessarily interested in Jack; she was looking for anyone to have a good time with. As soon as Jack left the picture, she turned her attention (and hormonal drive) to Stan. I know I sound like a prude; I really am not. Maybe I’m just jealous over how Jack seems to be carrying all the machismo for the UK!
I think the real stand out in the series is Michael Robbins
as Arthur. He is superb. Arthur is a huge hypocrite and is constantly horrible
to Olive and really to everyone else. He does it in a way that is believable. Apart
when he is yelling at everyone, he is actually a pretty quiet if hugely selfish
person. He is pretty unhappy with his life and would like everyone to know
about it. All the time! Stan is always loud, he is loud when he is just
talking. There is just an underrated quality about Michael Robbins. I have
watched him in a lot of stuff over the years. Obviously, he was great in Fairly
Secret Army (why the hell is this not on DVD!!!) and I also love his portrayal
of Richard Mace in the Doctor Who story, The Visitation. Easily it’s one of the
very best guest starring appearances of anyone in Doctor Who.
Anna Karen is also incredible as Olive. What I didn’t realize
is that Anna Karen wore a wig and put on padding to be Olive. She started out
her career as a stripper and was a stripper alongside Barbara Windsor. Her
stage name was “Anna Karen, the Swedish Sex Bomb”. In Christmas Duty, when the
bike slams into the bus, for the rest of the episode Olive has a weird stain on
the back of her white pants. Being in black & white you can’t tell what
colour the stain is and it looks a lot like she took a dump in her pants…..I’m
just saying! Also, a shout out to Stephen Lewis for Blakey. The funny thing
about Blakey is that he is not as bad as everyone makes him out to be. He just
follows the rules and that’s something Jack or Stan is not interested in doing.
On December 18, Ronald Wolfe co-creator of On the Buses
passed away. He wrote with Ronald Chesney. Not only did they create On the
Buses but also created such shows as The Rag Trade, Meet the Wife, and one of
my guilty pleasures Take a Letter, Mr. Jones. They even wrote an episode of
‘Allo ‘Allo! He passed away three days after he fell down the stairs at his
home. He was 89 and will be missed.
I watched these episodes from the Network release that was
boxed together of the single releases in 2006. No restoration work was done on
the episodes but they include ad caps. Some of the DVDs also include slates
before the episode as seen below. This is from Boxing Day Social.
All in all, a nice theme month of Holiday episodes for December. In January, we will be back to picking whatever we randomly choose and watching it. The next time we devote the entire month to a particular theme will be in May when we look at only the final episodes of a TV series. If you want a primer of what that was like, look what I wrote about the final two episodes of On the Buses here.
Finally, as I post this article it is January 2nd
2012. It was 50 years ago today Z Cars made its debut. 800 episodes were made,
a lot of them missing. It ran from 1962 to 1978. It spun off into many
different series, Softly, Softly (1966), Softly, Softly Taskforce (1969),
Barlow at Large (1971). Two of the characters were so popular, Barlow &
Watts, that two series were made where as their characters went through
paperwork and evidence of old famous cases to try and contemporarily solve
them. Such as Second Verdict (1976) and even Jack the Ripper (1973). With such
a long an illustrious history and multiple spin offs, one would assume there
would be a ton of DVDs of these series or maybe even a best of set. There is
none. Nothing at all. Never the less, happy anniversary Z Cars!
Do you have feedback, article requests or want to talk about
a program but not want to leave a public comment? Feel free to drop me an
e-mail at FTA13867@gmail.com
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Also please subscribe to my From the Archive: British Television Blog Page for updates about new articles.
Next week: out of Christmas but not out of comedy. I think for anyone in the US who got any interest in British television, this series is probably one of the first four series they would have seen. We will take a look at two episodes of the truly iconic Monty Python’s Flying Circus with two episodes from Series Two: Spam and Royal Episode 13. I will happily explain why I think Monty Python’s Flying Circus has received the shoddiest treatment of any series to be release on DVD.
4 comments:
Speaking of ages, Stephen Lewis was portraying the Inspector as a much older man than the actor was.
Anyway, another nice article, although I am still upset that my original oreder with Amazon got cancelled. Still, I did eventually snag the re-release in the thin cases for a reasonable price, so the anger has faded somewhat over the years.
Also, add me to the list of people wanting Fairly Secret Army to get a dvd release - long overdue.
I didn't realize the re-release were thin cases. I still can't believe the deal I got and it really got me interested in finding good deals on DVDs. Of course, it created a monster!
As it happens, today I ordered the colour set of Callan from Sendit for 12 quid! I think it is like 45 at Amazon.
Oh well, off to watch some Z Cars!
A nice article that captures what the episodes are about and the other blogs are a good read. I will post a link to this on my web site noticeboard for others to enjoy
Regards
Steve
ON THE BUSES fan club
web site; www.onthebusesfanclub.com/
Now in our 12th year
Nostalgia Never goes out of fashion
Hi Steve,
This is a real nice note. Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment. I'll be sure to stop by your site. Please stop back again!
Take care,
Greg
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