Saturday, September 11, 2010

Potter + A.J. Wentworth III, BA

A.J. Wentworth III, BA is now complete resulting in changes to Potter.

Potter was a sitcom written by Roy Clarke. It starred Arthur Lowe as a pompous interfering retiree with his suffering wife played by Noel Dyson. In the second series the main theme shifted to the chauvinistic attitudes of Potter and the Vicar (played by John Barron) and Harry H. Corbett was added to the cast as a retired gangster. Like the first series of Last of the Summer Wine, this Clarke work featured a lot of comical dialogue with 2 or 3 people talking at the same time and none of them talking about the same thing or listening to the others.
A third series was in the works when Lowe died suddenly. Already written and ready for production, Robin Bailey became the new Redvers Potter for the 3rd and final series.

Following Series 2 of Potter, Arthur Lowe went on to be the title character in A.J. Wentworth III, B.A. where he was a somewhat bumbling math teacher at a boys prep school circa 1940. The episodes were based on the stories of H.F. Ellis and also starred Harry Andrews. I found it very clever, but those that live punchline to punchline probably wouldn't enjoy it much. It's not that kind of simple comedy. By the time this was broadcast Lowe was already dead.

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