Porridge

Porridge
Porridge Titles
Format	Comedy
Created by	Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais
Starring	Ronnie Barker Richard Beckinsale Fulton Mackay Brian Wilde Sam Kelly Tony Osoba Michael Barrington
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of episodes	20 (List of episodes)
Production
Running time	18x 30 minutes 1x 40 minutes 1x 45 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	BBC1
Original run	5 September 1974 – 5 March 1977
Chronology
Followed by	Going Straight

Porridge is a British situation comedy broadcast on BBC1 from 1974 to 1977, running for three series, two Christmas specials and a feature film. Written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, it stars Ronnie Barker and Richard Beckinsale as two inmates at the fictional HMP Slade in Cumberland. "Doing porridge" is British slang for imprisonment, porridge being once traditional breakfast in UK prisons.

The series was followed by a 1978 sequel, Going Straight. Porridge was voted number seven in a 2004 BBC poll of the 100 greatest British sitcoms.

History

Porridge originated from an idea used in a 1973 series called Seven of One, also starring Barker. Each of its seven 30-minute episodes saw him playing a new character in a different setting. In the second, "Prisoner and Escort", a prisoner, Norman Stanley Fletcher (Barker), is being escorted from Brixton Prison to Slade Prison by two warders: the easy-going Mr Barrowclough (Brian Wilde) and the stern Mr Mackay (Fulton Mackay). After a long train journey, Fletcher asks to relieve himself at the tiny station where the prison minibus is waiting to take them to the prison. He urinates into the petrol tank, and Mackay strides off to the prison for help when the van stops in the middle of the moors.

Fletcher encourages Barrowclough to spend the night in an abandoned cottage. Here, Fletcher escapes and spends the night on the moors. He hides in a second empty building. He finds he is not alone and prepares to attack. Only then does it become obvious the other resident is Barrowclough and that the cottage is the one from which he set off. Back at the prison, Mackay tells Fletcher that the petrol tank was fuller than when checked and that it was "definitely not 5-star".^[1] Thus started the humorous conflict between Mackay and Fletch.

A year later this episode was chosen when the BBC was looking for a sitcom to star Barker. The first Seven of One programme also developed into a series: Open All Hours.

Television

Basic premise

H.M. Prison Slade Front Gatehouse (in reality the former St Albans Prison Gatehouse)

The central character of Porridge is Norman Stanley Fletcher, described by his sentencing judge as "an habitual criminal" from Muswell Hill, London. Fletcher's cellmate is Lennie Godber, a naïve inmate from Birmingham serving his first sentence, whom Fletcher takes under his wing. Mr Mackay is a tough warder with whom Fletcher often comes into conflict. Mackay's subordinate, Mr Barrowclough, is more sympathetic and timid — and prone to manipulation by his charges.

Each episode begins with a narration by the judge (voiced by Barker):

The prison exterior in the title sequence and some episodes is Maidstone Prison, which was also featured in the BBC comedy series Birds of a Feather. In the episode "Pardon Me" Fletcher speaks to Blanco (David Jason) in the prison gardens: this was filmed in the grounds of an old brewery outside Baldock on the A505 to Royston. The barred windows approximated a prison. The property has since been demolished. The 1974 episode "A Day Out", which features a prison work party, was filmed in and around the Welsh village of Penderyn, the prisoners' 'ditch' being excavated by a JCB. The 1979 film was shot entirely at Chelmsford Prison, Essex.

Crimes and punishments

There was a rule among that prisoners did not ask each other their crimes and specific offences were usually not mentioned in the dialogue. However, references were made in some episodes.

• Fletcher: in "A Day Out" Barrowclough says Fletcher was convicted for breaking and entering. In the pilot episode Fletcher recounts how he "should have stuck to what I knows best, house-breaking", but stole a lorry. The brakes failed and he crashed through a series of gardens, finally coming to rest in a tool shed. When asked if he was arrested for wilful destruction of property, to wit "knocking that wall down" he replies, "Oh yeah, an' I asked for six other fences [offences] to be taken into consideration. Get it? Get it?" indicating it may all be a joke. (5 years)
• Godber: breaking and entering, as mentioned by Mackay in the first episode, "New Faces, Old Hands" (2 years)
• Blanco: wrongly convicted of murdering his wife, although in the episode "Pardon Me" he was pardoned. He then admitted that he did kill his wife's lover (the actual murderer of his spouse), a crime for which he was not convicted.
• Hislop: robbery; mentioned by Mackay in the opening episode of the series (3 years)
• McLaren: not mentioned but by way of character maybe grievous bodily harm (3 years)
• Keegan: murder — poisoning his wife, as he admits in the Christmas special "The Desperate Hours"
• Jarvis: football hooliganism, as implied by Mackay in the final episode, "Final Stretch" (5 more years)
• Harris: according to Fletcher, Harris mugged an old woman but it went wrong when he found she had a brick in her handbag and pinned Harris down.
• Rawley: by his own description in the episode "Poetic Justice", Rawley was indicted for "party to criminal conspiracy, forgery of legal documents under the Forgery Act of 1913–1948, and accepting an illicit payment as an officer of the crown". Fletcher calls them bribery and corruption. His original sentence was three years, but it was overturned on appeal. He left the show after two episodes.

Cast

Ronnie Barker as Fletcher

• Norman Stanley Fletcher — Ronnie Barker
• Principal Prison Officer Mr Mackay — Fulton Mackay
• Lennie Godber — Richard Beckinsale
• Prison Officer Mr Barrowclough — Brian Wilde
• 'Genial' Harry Grout — Peter Vaughan
• ‘Bunny’ Warren — Sam Kelly
• Jim McLaren — Tony Osoba
• Lukewarm — Christopher Biggins
• Blanco Webb — David Jason
• 'Horrible' Ives — Ken Jones
• Harris — Ronald Lacey
• Geoffrey Venables (The Governor) — Michael Barrington
• Ingrid Fletcher — Patricia Brake
• The Honourable Mr Justice Stephen Rawley — Maurice Denham
• Cyril Heslop — Brian Glover
• Evans — Ray Dunbobbin
• Reg Urwin 'with a U' — Dudley Sutton
• Williams — Philip Madoc
• Spraggon — Alun Armstrong
• Jarvis — David Daker
• Banyard — Eric Dodson
• Mr Wainwright — Peter Jeffrey
• Mr Collinson — Paul McDowell
• Mrs Jamieson — Jane Wenham

The programme's scriptwriters appear, uncredited, outside Fletch and Godber's cell in the episode "No Peace for the Wicked".

Episode list

Each episode 30 minutes except where stated.

Pilot

Series 1 (1974)

Series 2 (1975)

Christmas specials

Series 3 (1977)

Going Straight

In 1978, a follow-up series to Porridge was made, entitled Going Straight. This featured Fletcher having been paroled and attempting to remain on the straight and narrow. It also featured Richard Beckinsale returning as Godber, in a relationship with Fletch's daughter, Ingrid (whom he married in the final episode), and Nicholas Lyndhurst as Fletcher's dim son, Raymond. The episodes regularly saw Fletcher offered temptations to commit crime and followed his reluctance to find work. The series lasted six episodes, and generally was not as well received as its predecessor, although it won BAFTAs for Best Situation Comedy and Best Light Entertainment Performance (jointly with The Two Ronnies) for Ronnie Barker. Following the sudden death of Beckinsale days before the BAFTA awards ceremony, Ronnie Barker decided not to proceed with a second series. A visibly upset Barker told the audience at the ceremony that the loss of Beckinsale meant he could not celebrate the award.

The film

Life Beyond the Box

In 2003, a mockumentary was produced detailing how Fletch's life had panned out in the 25 years since his release. The majority of the programme featured the surviving cast members, in character, with Ronnie Barker featuring in the last few minutes as Fletcher.

Porridge: The Stage Show

In late 2009, a stage production of Porridge will tour the United Kingdom. Written by the original creators and writers of the show, Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais, the show features Shaun Williamson as Fletcher.^[2]

DVD releases

See also

• List of films based on British sitcoms

Essential viewing for prisoners

Porridge was immensely popular with British prisoners. Erwin James, an ex-prisoner who writes a bi-weekly column for The Guardian newspaper, stated that:

He also noted:

Contributions to the English language

The script allowed the prisoners to swear without offending viewers by using the word "naff" in place of ruder words ("Naff off!", "Darn your own naffing socks", "Doing next to naff all"), thereby popularising a word that had been recorded at least as early as 1966.^[3] Ronnie Barker did not claim to have invented it, and in a television interview in 2003 it was explained to him on camera what the word meant, as he hadn't a clue.

A genuine neologism was "nerk", which was used in place of the more offensive "berk" (rhyming slang, short for "Berkshire hunt"). Another term was "scrote" (presumably derived from scrotum), meaning a nasty, unpleasant person.

Novelisations and audio

Novelisations of the three series of Porridge and the film were issued by BBC Books, as well as an adaptation of Going Straight.

BBC Enterprises released an LP record featuring two Porridge episodes, "A Night In" and "Heartbreak Hotel" in 1977.(REB 270)

References

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Porridge

• BBC Comedy Guide
• 100 Greatest Sitcoms: Porridge
• Porridge at IMDb
• British Film Institute Screen Online
• Porridge at British TV Comedy
• Porridge: The Unofficial Homepage
• British Sitcom Guide
• Erwin James (prisoner) article on Porridge in The Guardian