As you probably know by now My Family is my favourite sitcom, and my two favourite Xmas specials are the episodes Glad Tidings We Bring (the 2004 Christmas Special - this is the one where Janey gets married, Daniela Denby-Ashe looked really pretty in that wedding dress that she had to wear for filming that episode 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍) and 2039 : A Christmas Oddity (the 2009 Christmas special, because it's hilarious 🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂). The pick-up goes without a hitch, which is more than can be said for Slocombe's surreptitious escape plan. Fletcher doesn't want to spend Christmas in his cell, and through a convoluted series of events involving the building of a tunnel, he ends up in hospital for Christmas with his feet up in a quiet, comfortable private room. A welcome DVD release for this series of seven single comedies featuring the many faces of Ronnie Barker. Upstart Crow-incredibly clever and there is perhaps a surprising warmth about the two Christmas specials.

In this episode, we discover the governor (Michael Barrington) is a staunch teetotaller, with a zero tolerance approach to alcohol on prison premises.The script allowed the prisoners to swear without offending viewers by using the word " naff" in place of ruder words ("Naff off! Following the example of other sitcom crossovers, such as Dad's Army, Steptoe and Son and The Likely Lads, a feature-length version of Porridge was made in 1979. For series 2 and 3, it is broken down by sentence into three sections and has an echo effect added to increase the gravity of the 'judge's' words, with each of the three sentences followed by shots of locking various doors around the 'prison' with key locking sound effects.

And for some reason old classic films like The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Three Muskateers ( both kept on my iPad ) . However, I also liked the Gavin and Stacey Christmas Special from 2019 as well, and I like many others want to know what actually happened on THAT fishing trip! The opening credits consist of outside shots of Slade prison and of several doors and gates being closed and locked, which was intended to set the scene. Richard Beckinsale reprised his role as Godber, now the fiancé of Fletcher's daughter Ingrid (Patricia Brake), and the couple married in the final episode. Fletch hobbles in to see the prison doctor, limping heavily when he remembers due to this terrible knee problem that has supposedly kept him in constant pain since he had an operation some years previously.

When Fletcher and Godber are discovered selling their own special home brew, they're dragged up before the governor. The Doctor is even less forgiving than Mackay, proud to have the lowest patient admission rate in the prison system and having no time for “malingerers” like Norman Stanley Fletcher. The theme music for the closing credits was written by Max Harris, who had also written the theme music for numerous other TV shows, including The Strange World of Gurney Slade, The Gold Robbers and Doomwatch, and would go on to arrange the theme for Open All Hours (which was written by Joseph Ascher), another of the Seven of One pilots.