I Was A Hitman For Primrose Dairies
The first episode of series 30 of Last of the Summer Wine aired today at 7:30pm. It featured the biggest shake up of the cast since its inception. Two of the trio from series 29 were reduced to secondary characters, they being Clegg and Truly. In their place are established charactor Entwistle and new character ‘Hobbo’.
‘Hobbo’ is a mentalist former Primrose Dairies Milkman who believes he once had ties with MI5 and being a Milkman was a cover. Always making strange hand movements (much like Foggy used to) once causing a Waiter to drop a very large tray of Sandwiches.
Other changes include the return of ‘The Captain’ who is the head of the local Golf club that Barry visits. As usual there was a guest star in this episode, this time being Mortar who was the Debt collector who often visited Tom a long time ago but he is now retired so they are now friendly towards each other. Auntie Wainwright makes a return but seems to have lost weight and now looks not a day older than when she first arrived in Holmfirth in the 1980s! It has also reduced the amount of screen time the secondary characters have so it is very much like it was in the 1980s.
The most major change is the change of colour of the credits, from the familiar yellow to white. I have no idea why they changed the colour but perhaps it was in memory of Kathy Staff who died a couple of weeks ago who was attributed at the end of the closing credits. This is not the first time the credits have been white, from series 3 until series 4 and during the reign of Seymour the credits were also white. The typeface has stayed the same since series 29 however.
The plot – Luther ‘Hobbo’ Hobdyke, a retired milkman with strong links to MI5, arrives in the village. Very soon, calling upon his experiences on numerous dangerous missions overseas as a master spy, he forms a small team of reluctant volunteers, consisting of Alvin and Entwistle, ready to react to any emergency in the village. Finding that Hobbo has moved in next door, Clegg and Truly recall that he was never much of a milkman, but have to admit that his needlework is always exemplary. (Thanks to the BBC)
So do you like series 30 so far? Or has it changed to much? Please vote in my poll to the right!
When is the next episode? I have no idea but when I find out I will post it here by which time it will be 2009 so Happy New Year!
UPDATE: The next episode will air on April 19th and is called Some Adventures Of The Inventor Of The Mother Stitch!
3 comments so far
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i thought the series should have ended at the death of bill owen, even some years before that. in recent years this series is constantly reinventing itself, to deal with all the envitable cast changes. some work – frank thornton was a marvellous asset. others turn up as a one-off appearance; are asked to reappear; and become tiresome fixtures. with peter sallis and frank thornton now limited in their involvement in the show it seems we have a new regular trio – last of the summer wine: the next generation. alvin is compo. entwistle has turned from the wesley-type character into clegg. and now russ abbot as truly/foggy/seymour/blamire type. and very well he plays it too. probably most like seymour if i had to say. as usual the script wasn’t up to much; but better than some recent offerings. it’s unfortunate clegg and truly cannot appear more, even if in studio scenes, but if we must have a younger trio instead i’m very glad russ abbot is leading it.
The Hobbo character is a disaster. Why on earth has he been created with the same principal attribute (“special forces” operative) as Foggy? It worked brilliantly for Brian Wilde but Russ Abbott simply does not cut the mustard in this role. This is one cast change too many, especially as a principal character. This episode packed in too many characters with little or nothing to do, so what was the point? One can understand that Frank T & Peter S are truly (no pun intended) getting older and probably don’t want to do much anymore, other than a token appearance but we didn’t need all the changes at one go.
I have watched LOSW for many years
and have not veered from watching it
after any of the cast died.
Sadly, I think the show has really
hit rock bottom. especially now they
have added Russ Abbot, who I don’t
think is that funny.
I saw the very first show with Russ in it
and and a VERY quick/short appearance of
Clegg and Truly. Now that some of the
characters who made the show great, have
died, I think I will give the LOSW a miss
from now on.