Last of the Summer Wine

Comedy Playhouse was a long-running British anthology series of one-off unrelated sitcoms that aired for 120 episodes from 1961 to 1975. Many episodes later graduated to their own series, including Steptoe and Son, Till Death Us Do Part, All Gas and Gaiters, The Liver Birds, Are You Being Served? and Last of the Summer Wine, which is the world's longest running sitcom, having run from January 1973 to August 2010. The first two series of Comedy... Playhouse were written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, but after that the episodes were written by various writers. In all, 27 series started from a pilot in the Comedy Playhouse. The first eight series were in black-and-white, with the rest being in colour. Like many television programmes from the time, many of 1960s episodes are missing presumed wiped. The first episode of the longest-running sitcom in the world, Last of the Summer Wine was broadcast in an episode. The BBC aired six comedy pilots in 1970 in Scotland only under the title Scottish Comedy Playhouse, none of which developed onto a full series. While these were being aired, Monty Python's Flying Circus was broadcast in the rest of the UK.
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First of the Summer Wine is a sitcom written by Roy Clarke that aired on BBC1. The pilot originally aired on 3 January 1988, and the first series of episodes followed on 4 September 1988. The show ran for two series of six episodes each, with the final episode airing on 8 October 1989. The pilot episode was produced and directed by Gareth Gwenlan. Both series of episodes were produced and directed by Mike Stephens. The BBC has never shown... repeats of the show, although repeats do occasionally appear in the UK on satellite station G.O.L.D.. The show was broadcast in Australia on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation network in the early 1990s. First of the Summer Wine was a prequel to Clarke's long running show, Last of the Summer Wine, portraying the youth of the principal characters from the mother show in the months leading up to World War II. With the possibility of war hanging over them, the young men and women enjoy their youth while trying to find a place for themselves in the world. The show used young, mostly unknown actors to play the characters, with only two actors from the original series making an appearance in the prequel.
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