Away bonnie lad, let’s gan and watch Auf Wiedersehen, Pet
They don’t make ‘em like this anymore – more’s the pity. Like the houses the workers constructed in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet was built to last.
The first series – which the review focuses on – was supreme and sublime – a star-maker for the actors who appeared in it. They included Jimmy Nail, Kevin Whately, Tim Healy and the lovely Timothy Spall.
The British comedy-drama television was about British construction workers who left the United Kingdom to work on a building site in Düsseldorf.
It was created by Franc Roddam after an idea from
Mick Connell, a bricklayer from Stockton-on-tees, and mostly written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais.
For context – it was broadcast from 1983 to 1984 and 1986 – the Margaret Thatcher years – high unemployment for the working class and clashes with the unions, especially the miners.
Men lost their jobs in their thousands, pits closed and families and communities – on opposing sides of strikes – were torn apart.
Contrastingly, it was the time of the Yuppie – champagne-quaffers who made their fortune working on the stock exchange and wore their wealth ostentatiously.
While most of this went undocumented in the series, it gave it an edge as the main workers – Oz, Neville and Denise – were from Tyneside – the region which greeted the death of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher with the headline: Ding Dong, the witch is dead.
The trio set off from the land barren of jobs to work as builders in Dusseldorf – the German setting was essential to the drama and comedy.
Memories of the Second World War might be faint now. Then, millions of people watching the series fought and lived through the conflict. Its end was 40 years in the past.
It gave the scriptwriters a rich seam to mine. As Oz says, why should we forgive the Germans – “they bombed my granny”. One of the episodes saw Neville save the site from an unexploded British bomb.
The real strength of the series – and subsequent ones set in Spain and America – even though the plots were weaker – lay in the characters and the interaction between them. They fought and clashed but were loyal to each other.
The magnificent seven were: Dennis – Tim Healy – was the leader. His marriage was falling apart and he was working in Germany to support his two children. The moral fibre of the piece.
Neville – Kevin Whately – under the thumb of his wife, Brenda, to whom he wrote postcards. Honest and hardworking.
Oz – Jimmy Nail – my favourite. Loud, belligerent, abrasive, heavy-drinking and showed no fidelity towards his wife or any concern for his son. He was happy to take the German’s Deutsche Mark but dissed them at every opportunity.
Barry – Timothy Spall – bright, well-meaning
West Midlander. He was an electrician with a large vocabulary and a motorbike, and was also bumbling and bashful.
Moxey – Christopher Fairbank – Scouse, scrounging plasterer with bad acne and a ‘past’.
Bomber – Pat Roach – an easy-going West Country brickie.
Wayne – Gary Holton – Jack the lad. A Londoner, he was a carpenter – chippy – by trade and loved women.
Their world was cranes, bricks, wooden huts, fry-ups, bottled lager, cards, darts, football and fights played out to a soundtrack of nails being hammered, wood being sawn and scraping of trowels against cement.
It was a masculine soap opera – showing life’s trials and tribulations – divorce, unemployment, love and loss from the male point of view.
There was a female presence – Nev’s nagging wife Brenda played by Julia Tobin and Oz’s formidable wife Marjorie, Su Elliott. She was a joy – every bit as tough as her husband.
The gentle Lysette Anthony played Christa, Brigitte Kahn was Dagmar – Dennis’s love interest – Caroline Hutchison was his estranged wife Vera and
Itwasa masculine soap opera – life’s trials and tribulations from the male point of view
Sheila Reid Bomber’s missus.
Like Only Fools and Horses it had two theme tunes – both perfect for the programme and its content. It opened with Breaking Away and That’s Living All Right – both sung by Joe Fagin.
Auf Wiedersehen, Pet can be seen on ITV 4.