The Likely Lads

source: The Likely Lads

A great fun movie capturing the characters we all know an love. The serious Bob and the fun loving and fancy free Terry, both bouncing off one and other perfectly. A great feeling of nostalgia ensues with the changing landscape of North and the idea that things will never be the same again - with Bob still trying to adjust to married life and Terry with yet another girlfriend - the four take a caravan trip together full of hapless adventure. Highly enjoyable

Recently I've watched both seasons of Whatever Happened to Likely Lads followed by this feature film. Although the antics of Bob and Terry did seem to start losing their edge after the first half of S2 (not unusual for long TV series), overall it was a very enjoyable and a refreshing experience. The movie, however, turned out to be a disappointment. First, the scenario itself was quite weak - it lacked direction, there was no central storyline and as a result, the film didn't have a build-up and a climax - the two things that made the majority of TV episodes work so well. Secondly the humour was by and large recycled - the jokes, innuendos and the typical Bob/Thelma tug o' war were all just the twitched versions of various TV scenes. And given the movie goes on for longer than a TV episode, watching the same thing over again, coupled with the absence of a coherent plot, made me feel bored halfway through. Onto the characters. Brigit Forsyth's Thelma got a bigger part to play in the film than she would've had in a typical TV episode. But given that in the show the character was (deliberately) kept one-dimensional, being "your stereotypical suburban wife", the enhancement of her role in the movie just made the scenes more dull and cliched. James Bolam's character, on the other hand, for some reason seemed to have lost a lot of the natural wit and charm that in the past would stir up the setting and enthrall in the viewer. Here we see Terry being somewhat lost both in his love life, as well as in his housing estate. The film also portrays a great deal of philosophical midlife-crisis-dialogues between the main characters, (reckoning in places where the pub banter would have normally been instead). As for me those scenes not only fail to blend in with the usual light-hearted manner of Bob and Terry's adventures, but also, they contributed little to the storyline, if not distracted from it. Perhaps it was just unexpected, (and hence, quite odd), to observe the "lads" from this angle, not least because the characters have never been developed in that direction in the first place. Overall, the film felt like an enmeshment of several of the less successful TV episodes and didn't add anything new to the story and the relationship of Bob and Terry as we know it.

Putting aside the fact that this film is dissimilar in many ways to the great TV sitcom 'Whatever happened to...', this is my favourite TV sitcom spin-off. There's not really enough plot to fill the time and it is very episodic, and it is a little cruder than the TV version too. However, we still have Bob unsure about being tied down to Thelma and a dull suburban life and of course we still have lifelong friend Terry who is rather common but has a much more free existence and does many things that Bob now feels unable to. I think my liking for the film is down to personal reasons - I was a young man in 1976, about to get married and lived the 1970's life, much more open and less regulated than we are now. Gosh, I even drove a Chevette at the time! When I see the Lads out together, knocking about the countryside or in the pub I get all misty, and I think it must be this nostalgia that makes me love this film so much. The keyboard/synth music is pretty cheesy, but it suits the film and its period so well. Next time you see this film, forget the (better) TV series and enjoy it for what it is.

Although the film is or was 1976,(released?) would anyone know if it was filmed in that year, as sometimes the actual filming of movies takes place the year before?,it was a great film in my view, and summed up the era very well,its amazing that is about thirty years since its making,i think it was also the best thing they did, as the TV series of them seemed to get in to a bit of a rut, i wonder what other people think,was the rumour true that the pair never spoke to each other off screen and generally hated each other!i see Rodney was on TV the other day looking very much older, any info about the filming would be a great help, thanks, Geoff.

In the 1970s there it was fashionable to adopt British television sitcoms into feature length films. Dads Army, Man about the House, Are you being served, Steptoe & Son as well as others appeared in the cinemas with varying success. The Likely Lads is regarded as one of the better film adaptations of a sitcom. I hate to see the worse ones as this one really is pants with actually no story-line. Terry (James Bolam) is working class, divorced and prone to be a layabout. His childhood friend Bob (Rodney Bewes) is happily married and has middle class aspirations. Both live in a Newcastle undergoing rapid change in the 1970s which is noted in the titles of the BBC series Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads, the sequel to the original series of the sitcom The Likely Lads. The plot seems to be Terry has a new Finnish girlfriend and along with Bob and Thelma they go on a caravanning holiday. The duo pick up a few dolly birds, lose their spouses and end up in the doghouse. They stay at a guest-house as they have no homes to go and as you did in the 1970s, Terry chats up the landlady and dull Bob chats up her nubile daughter. I almost laughed once. It was worth seeing for scenes of the north east in the 1970s which is the only recommendation.

A big screen outing for likely lads Rodney Bewes and James Bolam, it's a spin off from the popular TV shows that the two made in the 60's and 70's. It's directed by Michael Tuchner and written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. Plot sees lifelong friends Bob Ferris (Bewes) and Terry Collier (Bolam) finding that times are a changing very fast. When the street where they grew up starts to be demolished, the pair feel the pangs of nostalgia more than most, even bringing the onset of a sort of mid-life crisis. Bob has to face life in the normality of a marriage to the no nonsense Thelma (Brigit Forsyth), and Terry, recently divorced, takes on a new girlfriend whilst firmly ensconced at his parents high rise flat. When Thelma sees that Terry, once the bane of her relationship with Bob, is going steady and happy with Christina (Mary Tamm), she plans a caravan holiday for the four of them….Which surely will not go as planned? Although taking the title of the first show that ran on British TV between 1964 and 1966, this film spin off is closer in tone to the sequel show, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? During the 70's, Britain was awash with situation comedies, many of which had the obligatory film spin off. Sadly, very few of them were any good, bogged down by trying to extend a half hour comedy formula into three times the running time. The Likely Lads movie is one of the rare successes, mainly because the writers were so in tune with the times, they were able to plant the much loved characters in the 70's time frame and involve the comedy as such. Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? Always carried an air of melancholy about it, but the comedy was still rich and prominent, so it be with this film version. Bewes and Bolam were an excellent partnership, where Bob is a snob in waiting, borderline henpecked one at that, Terry is the slob, the boozy cynic always dragging Bob back to reality. But their bond is born from the days of hard drinking and chasing women, they hanker for those days again, it's almost as if they refuse to accept they are getting a bit too long in the tooth for such antics now. Here in the film, Clement and La Frenais play on this with much reward, you see, the modern world has not just caught them up, it's also winning the race between them. The answer is simple, take a holiday. But of course this too will be one for the miserablists to bemoan, it's a classic British holiday, small caravan, pouring rain, chance of nooky? Zero. Chance of great comedy? Very high. The plot doesn't in truth quite cover the 90 minute run time, but there's enough here to warrant it being called one of the better film spin offs from the 70's. Great acting, not just the boys, Forsyth always a revelation, and writing as crisp as a winters day. God bless those Geordie boys. 8/10

Whatever Happened to The Likely Lads? is a classic TV series. I bought this film as it is the equivalent of three further episodes as well as being Terry and Bob's final appearance. Unfortunately, it doesn't work quite so well as any of the TV episodes. A lot of the jokes are recycled from the series (and writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais' other works) and the story feels a bit directionless. Personally, I think Clement and La Frenais learnt a lot from this picture though. A few years later they made probably the best ever TV sitcom to movie transfer with the Porridge film- which actually has an effective plot to provide it's humour. The Likely Lads film is interesting to see what finally became of the lads. There are some great moments- Terry announcing "The end is nigh, Ferris!" and "Not my fault" on the megaphone, Bob and Thelma's last very public row, Terry getting hit by the vase thrown from his flat window and the cinema format allowed more classic comedy swearing than the BBC would have. As I say though, the whole thing just seems kind of forced and aimless. But it's still worth seeing for completists and- like all of the writers' work- is valuable as a great document of British social history. Interestingly, they again end with someone leaving the country for an uncertain future- just as in the original '60's Likely Lads series, the first ending of Auf Wiedersehen Pet and the ending of the recent Auf Pet revival. For the best of Terry Collier and Bob Ferris though, get the "Whatever Happened To" series on DVD.

Whatever happened to the Likely Lads is one of the best remembered British sit-coms of the 70s delighting in strong characterization between two friends, one a somewhat nostalgic but still feral working class man Terry, the other a domesticated and married aspiring middle class man, Bob. Alas, this dynamic is all but abandoned for this spin-off, one of the poorest of the 70s. The spin-off genre itself is notoriously bad, but there really was no excuse for this. The writing duo had 'taken advantage' of the cinematic version to insert crudities which would never have been allowed on TV. So many punch lines end with "I couldn't give a s**t" or "b*****cks", yes the script really is this witty, Elsewhere the usual interplay between Bob and Terry is allowed to flourish only infrequently, crammed into a plot which forces them both to act out of character through out. One really wonders what the writers were thinking of.

Based on a popular UK comedy series, this film concerns two men, former schoolboy friends now approaching middle age, living in the industrial North-East of England. One has "got on" and runs a small building firm, the other is a dissolute drifter. Though often extremely funny, the film, shot in wintry North-East landscapes, also conveys a sense of wasted lives and unfulfilled hopes.