TWENTY-ONE VITAL BITS OF INFORMATION ABOUT ICONIC BBC SERIES, PORRIDGE.
It’s impossible to say which of Britain’s sitcoms is the greatest. But always in the conversation - nestled amongst the cool (Fleabag), the loud (Fawlty Towers and Blackadder) and the monstrous (The Office) - is the quietly and determinedly hilarious, Porridge.
Set in HMP Slade, the series follows the incarceration of one Norman Stanley Fletcher (Fletch), who is sentenced to five years for undisclosed crimes. What we do know is that Fletch is a habitual criminal. But from the length of his sentence, we can conclude he’s not a rapist or murderer. He’s probably a small-time crook who’s racked up a series of misdemeanours and doesn’t appear repentant enough to those who sit in judgement of him. So now he has to spend half a decade sparring with wardens Mackay (Fulton Mackay) and Barraclough (Brian Wilde), while teaching young Lennie Godber (Richard Beckinsale) how to survive in prison .
Porridge’s 18 episodes ran on the BBC from 1974 to 1977 in the middle of a period of political and economic chaos in Britain, and audiences couldn’t get enough of the show’s gallows humour, delivered so precisely by Ronnie Barker and cast. Barker had other hits like Open All Hours and The Two Ronnies, but he always said Porridge was his crowning achievement. Maybe he was referring to the high degree of difficulty in portraying the degrading realities of prison life while, at the same time, never getting bogged in social realism.
Indeed, Porridge was more than a show about being locked up, and it was more than just laughs. As David Attenborough said: "It entertained and educated, gave you insight into psychology and current affairs, and was the greatest program we've ever seen.”
PORRIDGE - ITS GENESIS AND BEYOND
In 1972, the BBC commissioned a series of seven sitcom pilots – all of which featured the network’s biggest comedy star, Ronnie Barker. In fact, the whole point of the series, called Seven to One, was to find Barker a new project. Two of the seven pilots screened went on to be made into a series. They were Open All Hours, featuring Barker as a stuttering shopkeeper, and Prisoner and Escort – later renamed, Porridge.
Prisoner and Escort received the lowest ratings out of the seven comedy pilots. But the BBC felt the show, in which a convicted felon (Barker) is escorted to a remote Cumbrian prison by two warders, had the most potential as an on-going series.
The show’s writers, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, weren’t enthusiastic about writing a show set in a prison. They went to visit a prison for research and were left depressed by the hopelessness of the inmates’ situation.
But Clement and La Frenais changed their minds when they met with former convict-turned-author Jonathan Marshall, who taught them that prison life was about “little victories”. Marshall said that while prisoners weren’t likely to “win” on account of being locked up, there were other ways they could get one over the authorities. For Clement and La Frenais, Marshall’s insight crystalised what the series was about – a man trying to break the system via a series of tiny cuts.
Marshall also taught Clement and La Frenais prison slang that could be used in prime time. For instance, the series is credited with popularising the phrase ‘naff off’. Other slang words included 'nerk' (stupid, unpleasant person) and 'scrote' (a worthless, obnoxious person).
Then there was the issue of the title. Barker, Clement and La Frenais thought that while Prisoner and Escort was appropriate for a stand-alone pilot, it wasn’t suitable for a series. They toyed with calling the show Bird and Sir. One morning, Barker entered the production office and announced he’d thought of the perfect title. Clement and La Frenais responded that they had as well. Both parties had independently come up with Porridge – slang for “doing time.”
The series opens with the voice of a judge handing down his sentence to Norman Fletcher. Barker not only plays Fletcher, but he also plays the voice of the judge. For nostalgia’s sake – here are the judge’s words. “Norman Stanley Fletcher, you have pleaded guilty to the charges brought by this court and it is now my duty to pass sentence. You are an habitual criminal who accepts arrest as an occupational hazard and presumably accepts imprisonment in the same casual manner. We therefore feel constrained to commit you to the maximum sentence allowed for these offences. You will go to prison for five years.”
Originally, the focus of the show was to be the relationship between Fletcher and prison warden, Henry Barrowclough, with Fletcher exploiting the frailties in Barrowclough’s character. But when first time offender, Lennie Godber, moves into Fletcher’s cell in episode three, the show shifts gears. Suddenly Barker has a straight man to bounce off and the duo share a father-son dynamic which becomes the show’s engine.
Porridge debuted on September 5, 1974, to a massive audience of 16 million and the BBC wasted no time in commissioning a second season as well a Christmas special for 1975.
The audience average for Season Two was 16 million. And the Christmas special, No Way Out, was the top rating show on UK television for 1975 with an audience of 18.5 million.
There was a longer than usual break between series two and three as writers Clement and La Frenais worked on the US format of Porridge – called On the Rocks. The setting was Alamesa Minimum Security Prison in California. In the Fletcher role was Puerto Rican criminal Hector Fuentes, played by Josè Pères.
Clement and La Frenais wrote and produced a single season of 24 episodes for ABC (American Broadcasting Company) under the promo – “On the Rocks – funny cops, and funny robbers.” But they didn’t love the experience, saying the network took the edge off the show by trying to make it “family friendly” and “hip”. Although the ratings were strong (around 15 million) and the network wanted a second season, Clement and La Frenais declined the offer and wrote season three of Porridge (UK) from their offices in Beverley Hills instead.
Season three of Porridge, airing in 1977, maintained a healthy audience average of 15 million viewers. The final episode has Lennie Godber up for parole - leaving Fletcher to reflect how much of his life has been spent behind bars. And instead of continuing to seek 'little victories', he now just wants to do his time and get out.
Barker decided the third series of Porridge would be the last as he wanted to do something different, and Clement and La Frenais said they’d reached the finish line with the show as well. But when the BBC took the writers out for a long lunch, the conversation turned to what would happen to Fletcher when he got out. And that’s how the Porridge spin-off series, Going Straight, was commissioned.
Going Straight begins as Fletcher is released and revolves around him trying to stay out of trouble. But life on the outside is tougher than he thought – particularly when he discovers his former cellmate, Godber, has moved in with his eldest daughter. The series of six episodes won two BAFTAS.
Immediately after filming Going Straight, Porridge, the movie went into production. Called Doing Time in the US – it finds Fletcher and Godber back in jail and unwilling accomplices to an escape attempt during a football match. Once they breach the prison walls, they panic and decide they have to try and break back in.
The major difficulty in making the movie was the producers decided to film at an actual prison instead of the regular Porridge set at Ealing Studios. This meant the sound department couldn’t control the echoes in the halls, and the film lacked the intimacy of the TV series.
During the editing of the film, Beckingsale died suddenly of a heart attack at his Berkshire home at the age of 31. A post-mortem revealed he had a congenital heart defect. The tragedy put an end to the Porridge story, ensuring no more movies and no future seasons of Going Straight.
One of Beckingsale’s two daughters, Kate, would go on to achieve international success. She was five when her father died and described the experience as “100% soul-destroying and totally impacted me for ever."
In her Instagram bio, Kate describes herself as “A fatherless girl who thinks all things possible and nothing safe”. And in interviews she says she watches Porridge when she wants to feel comforted.
Thirty years after Norman Stanley Fletcher first saw the inside of HM Prison Slade, Ronnie Barker came out of retirement to record some 'in character' scenes for a BBC retrospective shown over Christmas 2003. 'I feel I owe much to Porridge,” he said. 'It was probably the best and most important show I did.'
QUOTES:
Mr Beal:
What you in for?
Fletcher:
Got caught.
***
Fletcher:
I wouldn't leave that bike there if I was you.
Mr Beal:
When I want your opinion, I'll ask for it.
Fletcher:
Suit yourself. But there are one or two thieves in 'ere. Know what I mean?
***
Bunny Warren:
'Ere Fletch!
Fletcher:
I'm late.
Bunny Warren:
Look, I've got a letter from the wife, can you read it to me?
Fletcher:
Listen Bunn, if you can't read, how do you know it's from your wife?
Bunny Warren:
It's got Elaine's scent.
Fletcher:
Cor, where's Elaine work? A tarpaulin factory?
***
Fletcher:
All right, I'll just give you the 'ighlights, all right? 'Dearest Bunny, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah... blah.
Bunny Warren:
Blah blah blah what?
Fletcher:
It's trivia, Bunn, it's just trivia, it's the weather, her mother's catarrh, she's retiled the lav, the canary's got haemarroids, she's met a welder at the Fiesta Club and she's thinking of movin' in with him. All right? Must rush. Can't hang about.
Bunny Warren:
But… We 'aven't got a canary.