Last of the Summer Wine is a British sitcom written by Roy Clarke that was initially broadcast on BBC One, and now regularly gets broadcast on the television channel Yesterday. Last of the Summer Wine premiered as an episode of Comedy Playhouse on 4 January 1973 and the first series of episodes followed on 12 November 1973. From 1983 to 2010, Alan J. W. Bell produced and directed all episodes of the show. The BBC confirmed on 2 June 2010 that Last of the Summer Wine would no longer be produced and the 31st series would be its last. Subsequently, the final episode was broadcast on 29 August 2010.Repeats of the show are broadcast in the UK on Gold and Yesterday. It is also seen in more than twenty-five countries, including various PBS stations in the United States and on VisionTV in Canada. Last of the Summer Wine is the longest-running comedy programme in Britain and the longest-running sitcom in the world.
Last of the Summer Wine was set and filmed in and around Holmfirth, West Yorkshire, England and centered around a trio of essentially harmless simpletons whose line-up changed several times over the years. The original trio consisted of Bill Owen as the scruffy and child-like Compo Simmonite, Peter Sallis as deep-thinking and meek Norman Clegg and Michael Bates as authoritarian and snobbish Cyril Blamire. When Bates dropped out through illness in 1976 after two series, the role of the third man of the trio was filled in various years up to the 30th series by the quirky war veteran, Foggy Dewhirst (Brian Wilde), the eccentric inventor, Seymour Uttherthwaite (Michael Aldridge), and former police officer Truly Truelove (Frank Thornton). The men never seem to grow up and develop a unique perspective on their equally eccentric fellow townspeople through their tiresome stunts. The cast grew to include a variety of supporting characters, each contributing their own subplots to the show and often becoming unwillingly involved in the schemes of the trio.