The Likely Lads turns 50

Geordie sitcom The Likely Lads turns 50 next month. Ahead of the landmark, the show's creators Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais have been speaking to the Express newspaper about the series' longevity, the failed 1996 revival of the sitcom, the long-time fued between stars Rodney Bewes and James Bolam and more.

Having set a new benchmark for sitcoms with Outnumbered, writing partners Guy Jenkin and Andy Hamilton know that expectations are high for their new pilot, part of Channel 4's Funny Fortnight. This one also centres around a squabbling suburban family, but that's pretty much where the similarities end. James Bolam and James Fleet play a father and son-in-law trying to negotiate a post-apocalyptic Britain in which economic collapse and climate change have created a lawless society of scavengers - think Survivors meets Steptoe & Son.

Having created the reigning champion of family sitcoms in Outnumbered, Guy Jenkin and Andy Hamilton take the genre into new territory - the future. Not the distant future but, as the title suggests, a few decades hence when economic collapse and rising sea levels have transformed life in Britain. The Pilch family struggle by in a house powered by batteries on a street beset by floods. There's plenty of black humour: casual asides refer to the Isle of Norwich and when Mick (James Bolam) admits to gambling away the Triple-A batteries, he explains, "I put them all on a dog fight... I bet on the dog and the bloke won."

An unspecified apocalypse has hit the UK, but petty suburban concerns linger on for the Pilch family: curmudgeonly old geezer James Bolam, hapless son-in-law James Fleet and bolshy grand-daughter Jennie Jacques. The next-door neighbour is still an irritant, although arguments revolve not around parking or foliage maintenance, but who dumped the corpse over the fence. Laptops are used to squash flies. And a formidable 'area commander' is on hand to dispense summary justice. There's the kernel of a good idea in Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin's show (their first since Outnumbered), but Just Around the Corner is a little too low key for its own good. The targets are soft, and the dull colours and dreary lives infect the writing and performances: the sitcom equivalent of a wet weekend.

A climate-changed, bank- collapsed England of the near future, where the Dutch are the despised immigrants (Holland having disappeared under water), is the subject of this Funny Fortnight sitcom pilot from Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin (Outnumbered and Drop the Dead Donkey). A promising scenario delivered by James Fleet and James Bolam.

I love Alan Plater's works - the Beiderbecke Trilogy DVDs of the Yorkshire TV comedy dramas starring James Bolam and Barbara Flynn have a permanent spot next to my DVD player. His new comic radio play follows the opening night of a new Tyneside art gallery, which is thrown into jeopardy by the well-meaning but ill-trained staff, who have all been hired to tick a 'quota' box.