Old pals’ act still Likely to be a classic
IT is 48 years since the first episode of Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads appeared on television.
The sitcom told of the mid-life exploits of old pals Terry Collier and Bob Ferris, played by James s Bolam and Rodney Bewes.
If the original 1960s black and d white depiction of the Likely Lads had been set in some generic, unspecified Northern location, the all-colour, much-improved ‘Whatever Happened To...’ was very deliberately set in Newcastle.
As one half of the writing team, Whitley Bay-born Ian La Frenais would say years later: “I wanted to put my home town on the map.”
The first episode of ‘Whatever Happened To...’ was broadcast on BBC1 on January 9, 1973. There would be two series - the last episode being shown on Christmas Eve 1974.
The show’s title sequences were filmed around the city in the summer of 1972 and featured locations in Byker, Ouseburn, Cruddas Park, the city centre and Killingworth (the fictional Elm Lodge housing estate).
When BBC crews arrived to capture footage here nearly half a century ago, they were able to film children at play, climbing amid the remnants of Victorian-built terraced houses due for imminent demolition.
This was Gloucester Road in the west of the city, one of the old streets leading off Westgate Road, which once teemed with life.
By 1972 the people who h once lived here were gone and the bulldozers were ready to flatten the homes that had housed working men and their families for 100 years.
Contrasting with the ‘old’ and ‘derelict’ was the ‘new’.
It was a theme La Frenais, and writing partner Dick Clement, would return to frequently in the Likely Lads.
In the background behind the dilapidation, we see the modern highrise Todds Nook flats, which dated from the early years of the 1960s and which, like other tower blocks that emerged across Newcastle, characterised the concepts of ‘a city in the sky’ and ‘Brasilia of the North’ which were enthusiastically expounded at the time.
As for the Likely Lads, there would be no more TV series.
There was a spin-off feature film released in 1976 before Bolam fell out with Bewes over a misunderstanding.
The pair never worked together again – and never spoke again.
Rodney Bewes died a week before his 80th birthday in 2017.
James Bolam, now 85, lives quietly in retirement in Sussex.