Comedy Connections - The Liver Birds

[Jamie]

The BBC programme 'Comedy Connections' is going to have a programme dedicated to The Liver Birds which Elizabeth Estensen featured in several series. Elizabeth Estensen is one of the contributors and will talk about the show. It may also mention, or fingers crossed see some of, T-Bag - it was her biggest role after The Liver Birds ended. Details of the times are below, set your VCR, DVD etc:

Comedy Connections - Friday 01 August
10:35pm - 11:15pm
BBC1
The Liver Birds
The series charting the history of the best of British comedy looks at The Liver Birds, a groundbreaking sitcom centred around the lives of two young Liverpudlian women. Not only was it one of the earliest successful shows to be written by and starring women but it also survived the loss of two central characters, and was so well loved in the 1970s it returned for a controversial reunion in the 1980s.

[raggedbone]

Ha ha -- I love these synopses, they always manage to get something wrong. The revival wasn't shown in the 1980s -- it was broadcast in 1996; and the only controversy was that a few fanboys in anoraks (like myself!) were a bit put-out when, in bringing back Polly James rather than Elizabeth Estensen, Beryl inherited Carol's entire family. But marvellous news on this -- I'd been hoping this series might eventually cover 'The Liver Birds'. There's already one on another rather good Carla Lane series, 'Butterflies' ... and I think there's one about 'Bread' too.

[Jamie]

I've watched the comedy connections programme from last night but there was no mention of T-Bag ,there was a mention of what Nerys Hughes did after the programme but very little on the rest of the main cast. It was still great to see Elizabeth talk about her time on the show and there were even clips of her in the production of John, Paul, George, Ringo … & Bert.

If anyone missed the programme it is repeated tonight on BBC2 at 23:25.

[raggedbone]

While it was an interesting forty minutes of television and I can't fault them on the subject matter, as a long-time fan of 'The Liver Birds', I felt a little short-changed by the programme's emphasis on the Polly James/Nerys Hughes era. Although it's brief overview of the short Pauline Collins series was understandable (those clips that were shown are pretty much all that exists from the four episodes made in 1969), the five successful years following Polly James' departure and Elizabeth Estensen's arrival were covered a little too quickly for my liking, especially as the first couple of series with Nerys Hughes (covered on this show in great detail) aren't really that good -- but there you go! It was very nice to see Elizabeth Estensen talking in greater depth about the series and overall I did enjoy it. A shame T.Bag wasn't mentioned, but then neither was anything else on Estensen's CV since 1979.