Review of Nearest And Dearest: The Complete Seventh Series

Introduction

Series Seven was the last hurrah of this fondly-remembered Granada sitcom from the 1960s. First screened between December 1972 and February 1973, it comprised seven thirty-minute episodes continuing the adventures of Eli and Nellie Pledge, late-middle-aged siblings and owners of Pledge`s Purer Pickles.

The series had started in black and white in 1968. Music Hall stalwarts Jimmy Jewel (of double-act Jewel and Warriss) and Hylda Baker were cast as frequently sparring brother and sister who had inherited their father`s all-but-bankrupt pickling business. Eli was fond of a drink and chasing the ladies while Nellie was the eternal spinster who disapproved of his womanising and nagged him as if they were married.

Eli and Nellie shared the old man`s equally run-down house, and that and the factory were the background to a host of characters that would once have been described as "grotesques". Some of the supporting cast were particularly memorable - cousin Lily (Corrie`s Madge Hindle) and her silent, weak-bladdered husband Walter (Eddie Malin) - the latter prompting Nellie to enquire regularly "Have you been?". Also in the cast, two years before becoming Wally Batty in Last of the Summer Wine, Joe Gladwin played toothless, myopic Stan the pickler.

Series Seven bridged Christmas 1972 and starts off with "Cindernellie", where Eli invests the factory Christmas Club money in a pantomime and he and Nellie have to take on all the roles when the cast walk out. "Good Time Girl", transmitted just before New Year, has Nellie`s public image changed when people think she is going out with local lothario and new lodger Harry Hampton. "The French Disconnection" sees Nellie, Eli, Lily and Walter trying to sell Pledge`s Pickles to the sophisticates of Paris (without, of course, leaving the Granada Studios lot in Manchester). "Get Out Of That" sends the gang to a health farm for a week while "The One That Got Away" sees Nellie disappointed in romance again when a German they met in 1946 returns to the district looking for the woman he fell in love with. "The Visit" has panic setting in at Pledge`s Pickles when they think they are in for a Royal visit. The last episode of the show is "Far From The Madding Pong", when Nellie, Eli, Walter and Lily spend a weekend in a lonely moorside cottage.

At the start of this review, I said "fondly-remembered", didn`t I? Nostalgia is a cruel mistress, filling your mind with dodgy memories that things were better, funnier or more scary than they really were. Created by Vince Powell and Harry Driver (who also created Love Thy Neighbour, but we don`t hold that against them, do we?), the show was a straightforward Northern sitcom, full of hackneyed, stereotypical characters and situations. What lifted it out of the rut was the verbal pyrotechnics of arguments between Nellie and Eli, and Nellie`s penchant for malapropisms.

Video

Recorded at Granada on 2-inch Quad videotape, using 1972 vintage video cameras, the image is soft and suffers from burned-out highlights

Audio

Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono. What do you expect?

Features

An interview carried out at the time the show was being produced with Hylda Baker and Jimmy Jewel.

The first episode of not-quite-spinoff-series Not On Your Nellie.

No subtitles

Conclusion

A disappointing return for this viewer to a fondly-remembered tv show. I remember it as having verbal pyrotechnics comparable to Steptoe and Son, but without the swearing. The reality is something of a let-down, although after seven series, the stars and writers were obviously not on top form.