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.
It's all too easy to get lost in the trend for sitcom films that ran through the 70's and 80's in the UK. But The Likely Lads will always stand out to me, as the finest example of it's type.
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.
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.
An interesting film to watch if you feel nostalgic for Tyneside locations that have now gone. The flat where Terry lives in Howdon was part of an ambitious high rise scheme that was built in 1961 but by the eighties had become run down,vandalised and prone to lift failures and damp on the higher floors.
The Likely Lads was one of my absolute favourite comedies from the 1960's, a great change from the usual more middle class shows.For a change I saw people who were just like me and I have worked with blokes just like them.
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.
An uneven though interesting film still watchable for the most part with sharply observed dialogue especially between the two protagonists contrasting with occasional bouts of Carry On voyeuristic titillation & Whitehall farce humour & oddly misappropriate parachuting of crude language all of which I found excruciatingly embarrassing in 2017 (though wonder if I would have done in 1976). Carry on films despite the crudity can still produce good one-liners (Infamy Infamy they've all got in in for me) and this one has a brilliant one delivered most amazingly by Thelma Bob's wife the most "respectable" character in the film but to be worth a review the film does have a life at the crossroads where do we go from here in a vastly changed world from our youth feel that makes it interesting and is sustained despite slipping into cul-de-sacs of crudity both visual and verbal at times which spoil the film.
I thoroughly concur with all the positive reviews of the film , however my main love is the very evocative background music ? where oh where can this be obtained , was there ever an album release at the time ?
