Three Litre
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Post by Three Litre on Apr 6, 2021 16:15:12 GMT
The American version of On The Buses, 'Lotsa Luck', is on youtube if you want to marvel at how bad it is. According to wikipedia this is the unaired pilot, it's a version of 'Family Flu' the first episode of series 2 of OTB. Lotsa Luck was not a ratings success apparently & lasted one season of 22 episodes. Ive Seen This Before and how shocking is that god almighty absolute sh*te. I'm sure it's not easy to make a show this awful. You can't just turn up, make a show and hope it turns out like a pile of excrement, you have got to put some effort and planning into it. Dom DeLuise was funny in quite a few films. Not so much this one. |
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Sparky
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Post by Sparky on Apr 6, 2021 16:27:17 GMT
Ive Seen This Before and how shocking is that god almighty absolute sh*te. I'm sure it's not easy to make a show this awful. You can't just turn up, make a show and hope it turns out like a pile of excrement, you have got to put some effort and planning into it. Dom DeLuise was funny in quite a few films. Not so much this one. Flippin' eck - Kathleen Freeman is in it too.
She was the Nun in the "Blues Brothers".....
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Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2021 21:37:54 GMT
On the Buses is a very British thing, very much like Carry on Films, and I don't think it would translate at all well to any other culture. I'm surprised at the yanks bothering with it at all. You say that but I have a foreign husband - he is Danish - and while they got some British shows on telly in Denmark over the years, they didn't get a hell of a lot that we regard as classic. They never got On The Buses but I told him how much I loved it, what the characters were like, etc, and he watched it with me and he roared his socks off. He just couldn't get enough of it. He hates the politically correct bull that is around today and he can see it for what it is, just a bit of saucy harmless fun. He says Arthur is his favourite character because he is so put upon, he thinks he is more intelligent than the others yet he always comes a cropper and embarrasses himself. He has a thing for Olive, too, because she is a bit frumpy. I tell him that you must have a fetish for frumps and that's why you married me! :D I also introduced him to other British comedy he never saw in DK, some he got, some he didn't and one that he didn't to begin with but then it clicked and he now loves it and quotes lines/scenes from it a lot :) |
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Cartman
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Post by Cartman on Apr 6, 2021 21:44:14 GMT
Yes I liked Arthur too, Michael Robbins who played him was also in an episode of The Sweeney, Big Brother, series 2. Olive, in real life (Anna Karen) wasn't as much of a mess as she was made to be in the programme.
Piece of trivia, one of the Buses used in the films, VNO 857, survives in preservation and is a regular at bus rallies in its original Eastern Counties livery.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2021 22:47:53 GMT
Yes I liked Arthur too, Michael Robbins who played him was also in an episode of The Sweeney, Big Brother, series 2. Olive, in real life (Anna Karen) wasn't as much of a mess as she was made to be in the programme. Piece of trivia, one of the Buses used in the films, VNO 857, survives in preservation and is a regular at bus rallies in its original Eastern Counties livery. No, she was ordinary, like us all. Makeup and wigs and clothes can do a lot to change the look of a person, for good or bad. Michael Robbins was also a bit part actor in an ep of New Statesman, where he was a boxing trainer and also in One Foot In the Grave twice for two different parts, one as a neighbour shouting out of a window and one as the chairman of the allotments association. |
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Post by Arthur Pringle on Apr 8, 2021 22:56:56 GMT
I watched a yt video of an On The Buses convention where Ronald Wolfe points out that Olive looks the way she does due to her missing teeth. Funny they made so much of her being unattractive when Jack, the lothario of the show, looked the way he did. One thing that makes the show a bit troubling is the constant barracking of Olive, she's just there to be jeered at. If Bob Grant had trouble finding work I imagine Anna Karen had it a lot worse, her role in the show was pretty thankless, especially for a young woman.
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Sparky
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Post by Sparky on Apr 9, 2021 14:51:56 GMT
I watched a yt video of an On The Buses convention where Ronald Wolfe points out that Olive looks the way she does due to her missing teeth. Funny they made so much of her being unattractive when Jack, the lothario of the show, looked the way he did. One thing that makes the show a bit troubling is the constant barracking of Olive, she's just there to be jeered at. If Bob Grant had trouble finding work I imagine Anna Karen had it a lot worse, her role in the show was pretty thankless, especially for a young woman.
Bob Grant did a lot of pantos; especially around the late 70s early 80s. He was in panto in 1981/82 in Birmingham - and managed to drop in (in panto costume) to the first edition of Central News - this the first day Central was on air. He (and many others) seemed quite p*ssed.
What did he do thereafter?
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Post by Deleted on Apr 19, 2021 0:22:18 GMT
I watched a yt video of an On The Buses convention where Ronald Wolfe points out that Olive looks the way she does due to her missing teeth. Funny they made so much of her being unattractive when Jack, the lothario of the show, looked the way he did. One thing that makes the show a bit troubling is the constant barracking of Olive, she's just there to be jeered at. If Bob Grant had trouble finding work I imagine Anna Karen had it a lot worse, her role in the show was pretty thankless, especially for a young woman.
She said in an interview, from the early 2000s, that she knew why her character was in the show, she knew Olive was a frump, etc, and was to be the butt of comments, and she said she never minded that at all, it was only acting, Olive was only a character and she said she enjoyed it, it was only a bit of fun. She had had her teeth fixed in the intervening years too. |
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Post by Arthur Pringle on May 31, 2021 20:03:59 GMT
TV Times article on Reg Varney from December 1972-
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Post by Charles Bronson on Jun 1, 2021 16:36:14 GMT
Thank you Arthur, for putting up that TV Times interview with Reg. I very much enjoyed it. I knew Reg had been in partnership with Benny Hill, but I'd never heard or read any comments from them regarding that time in their careers.
Charles.
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