Hi De Hi

[Alan Hayes]

Just watched Who Killed Mr Partridge and it's a right oddity. Played almost like a straight drama at times - and I'd completely forgotten the ending and that Partridge survived!

[Dave Homewood]

I still have not found a copy of that book.

[Alan Hayes]

Turns up on ebay UK very regularly. I imagine the delivery charges could well make it expensive though.

[Alan Hayes]

The camp controller who shows up in Series 8... what a nasty piece of work... Very well played by Ewan Hooper. All the more terrifying in light of the current hot topic of the abuse of power.

[Alan Hayes]

The other way in which the later series rewards long-term viewers is that we are finally treated to things mentioned but not seen in earlier series - for instance Ted's 'famous people on the lavatory' sketch and we actually see Gladys running a keep fit session.

Also, the 1987 Christmas special 'Tell It to the Marines' is pretty much a remake of the Dad's Army episode 'The Showing Up of Corporal Jones' (with a nod to 'Shooting Pains' thrown in for good measure with Peggy done up as a man a la Laura La Plaz).

Great fun.

[Alan Hayes]

Well, I've just finished my rewatch of Hi-de-Hi! and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's catapulted itself into my Top 10 - I'd forgotten just how good the series is, and it's done the nigh on impossible... made me wish I'd holidayed at Maplins!

[Dave Homewood]

I'm up to Series 7. I think the series really lost something when Simon Cadell left. He was such an incredible actor in the role of Jeffrey Fairbrother. The replacement character S/Ldr Clive Dempster really has none of the charm or subtlety of Jeff.

I'm also dreading the departure of Barry, he was one of the best characters in it.

[Alan Hayes]

Cadell was certainly superb in the series, and very funny at that. In an ideal world, he would have continued through, but I did like that the new character allowed some fresh angles to be explored.

I presume the original plan was for Gladys to end up married to Jeffrey Fairbrother, in the fullness of time.

All told, I liked how it played out and didn't think the Dempster character was inferior to the one it replaced - nicely different. I'd say the same thing of Barry Stuart-Hargreaves' replacement, who was also a fun addition.

[Dave Homewood]

Series six is a bit weird in that we see Mr Partridge (Leslie Dwyer) in the location scenes but it seems he'd died by the time they came to film the studio scenes. So they brought in actor Ronnie Brody to play some of Dwyer's lines, and strangely he plays it in the same way Dwyer would have, and even uses Dwyer's catchphrase of "Listen to that silly cow". I would have thought, even if it was short notice,they'd have adapted the scripts a little more to detract a little more from the absence of Dwyer. They never even introduced Brody's character, he was just suddenly there.

It felt a bit like the ad hoc scramble to rewrite the studio scenes when Jimmy Beck fell ill just before they recorded Things That Go Bump In The Night and The Recruit, in Dad's Army. But not doe with as much finesse in the Hi-de-Hi case.

[Alan Hayes]

Jun 9, 2019 12:59:10 GMT 12 Dave Homewood said:

Series six is a bit weird in that we see Mr Partridge (Leslie Dwyer) in the location scenes but it seems he'd died by the time they came to film the studio scenes.

Not quite the case. Dwyer was too ill to appear in the studio recordings for Series 6, but didn't actually pass away until 26th December 1986, a day before the transmission of the final episode of Series 8 (just over two years after Partridge's last on-screen appearance in Series 6's 'Hey Diddle Diddle, Who's On the Fiddle').

Therefore, any disquiet you may feel watching the early episodes of Series 7, which deals with Partridge's 'murder', should be tempered by the fact that the actor was still, at that point, alive.

[Alan Hayes]

Also, sad to read that Barry Howard was written out and replaced by Ben Aris due to a drink problem (and throwing a Yellowcoat into the pool at Dovercourt!) which left him too ill to feature in the last two series.

www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/apr/29/barry-howard-obituary

Nice though that he was brought back in a one-off guest role in You Rang M'Lord and appeared in the 2010 Hi-de-Hi stage show.

[Dave Homewood]

Oh that is interesting about Dwyer,however Mr Partridge wasn't 'murdered' till the beginning of the next series after he was dead.

Barry Howard returned to play Barry Stuart-Hargreaves on stage late, with the actress who plays Sylvia now playing Yvonne.

[Alan Hayes]

Jun 11, 2019 8:52:29 GMT 12 Dave Homewood said:

Oh that is interesting about Dwyer,however Mr Partridge wasn't 'murdered' till the beginning of the next series after he was dead.

You're mistaken, Dave. The 'It's Murder'/'Who Killed Mr Partridge' episodes aired in January '86. Dwyer passed away nearly a full year later.

[Dave Homewood]

Oh yes, quite correct.

[Alan Hayes]

Hence my comment suggesting that the opening episodes of Series 7 might be interpreted today as being in poor taste. I thought that on my rewatch recently and then checked the dates and realised that I'd jumped to an incorrect conclusion - and clearly great minds think alike.

[Dave Homewood]

We're just too used to poor Jimmy and David having to rejig when one of their key cast members dies. Jimmy Beck, Michael Bates, Arthur Brough, Jack Haig, etc.

[Alan Hayes]

Very true... and sadly so. With no offence intended to the memory of James Beck, I always thought the one loss that really changed a Croft and Perry series was Michael Bates'. Ranji was such a pivotal character that It Ain't Half Hot Mum was never quite the same when he was gone. The other series were affected - and you missed those characters and actors - but they weren't as fundamentally changed as IAHHM was without Bates.

Just my opinion of course.

[Dave Homewood]

I agree. But the show was originally set up with Michael Bates and George Layton as THE main stars. Ranji was the narrator almost, and the tie in between all the different levels. And Solly was pretty much based on Jimmy Perry himself. They lost both, but Ranji was the bigger loss.

When Michael Bates died, Jimmy and David received a letter from Spike Milligan asking if he could take over the part. After all, like Michael, Spike was also born in India, grew up among the Indian natives, spoke Urdu fluently, and he even looked similar to Micheal. And he had experience playing Indian characters. But Jimmy and David respectively declined because they knew no-one could replace Michael. He was so central and so well known, recasting the character would be a disaster. I think they made the right choice. When characters began to be recast with new actors in the same roles in Allo Allo it was the death of the show, and they were only peripheral characters. But a little bit of me would have loved to have seen Spike as Ranji Ram.

[Alan Hayes]

I'd not heard that about Spike. Could have been interesting, but I think Jimmy and David probably made the right decision. I do think there they would have been faced with a danger that Milligan's fame would have made IAHHM too much 'Spike's show' when it was always set up as an ensemble piece like Dad's Army.

[Dave Homewood]

Jimmy Perry told me that himself so I know it is accurate.

Back to Hi-De-Hi, when Julian Dalrymple-Sykes gets all worked up over Yvonne, he is very reminiscent of the Honorable Teddy Meldrum getting excited over the maids with their shiny scrubbed faces