Roy Clarke's Open All Hours: The Complete Series

Product Description Open All Hours: Complete Series (DVD)Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced "bouquet") goes to incredible lengths in her quest for perfection. Hers is a spick-and-span house. Her downtrodden husband, Richard, acts as chauffeur in their immaculately kept car. Their permanently absent son has a superior name, Sheridan. Even the empty milk bottles sparkle on the doorstep after their obligatory rinse in the dishwasher. Hyacinth delights in her "candlelit suppers", but her guests live in fear of receiving her invitations. Next-door neighbor Liz is so nervous that she is guaranteed to break or spill something. Her brother Emmet hides every time he sees Hyacinth. And the Buckets' distinguished friend, the Major, and the vicar and his wife all do their best to keep out of her way. In marked contrast to Hyacinth's meticulously ordered life, however, the rest of her family are as common as muck. They live together in a rundown house that looks like a junkyard. Sister Daisy and her husband, Onslow, are out-and-out slobs. Her other sister, Rose, is an aging tart. And her elderly father is a lecherous drunk, given to cycling stark-naked down by the canal, chasing the milkwoman. Whatever Hyacinth does, her family can always be guaranteed to show her up. Can she ever live down the disgrace?]]> Amazon.com Already old-fashioned when the show was made, Open All Hours now seems like a glimpse into a much earlier world. Ronnie Barker (The Two Ronnies) stars as Arkwright, a tight-fisted middle-aged Doncaster shopkeeper, while David Jason (Only Fools and Horses) as Arkwright's nephew Granville makes deliveries by bicycle in a manner more evocative of the 1930s than the '70s. Barker's relationship with Jason parallels his rapport with Richard Beckinsale in Porridge (1974-78), and while the pair may not be in prison, the confines of the small general dealer's shop often seem like that to Granville. Even though at 36 Jason seems way too old to play the supposedly teenage Granville, he and Barker make a great double act. The dry Northern humor centers mostly on money and sex, the latter interest in Arkwright's case being the buxom charms of Nurse Gladys Emmanuel, very well played by Lynda Baron. Like writer Roy Clarke's Last of the Summer Wine, the episodes are more amusing character sketches than stories. The four-disc set includes all four seasons of the original U.K. show, a reasonably detailed text biography of series writer Roy Clarke, and, much more notably, a complete bonus episode--the 1973 series pilot. --Gary S Dalkin