[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/auf_wiedrsechen_pet.png]]
[[caption-width-right:350:The original "Magnificent Seven": (clockwise from top l) Neville, Barry, Oz, Moxey, Wayne, Dennis, and Bomber]]

''Why Aye, man!''

[[{{Dramedy}} Comedy-drama]] from the writing team of Creator/DickClementAndIanLaFrenais. Season One (1983-1984) involved seven manual labourers from various parts of England. It was the mid-Eighties and there were [[Music/TheSpecials no jobs to be found in this country]], so they travelled to Germany to find work, forming themselves into a tight-knit group amid all the CultureClash. They even used ''[[Film/TheMagnificentSeven1960 The Magnificent Seven]]'' title.

Season Two (1986) featured the same seven re-uniting and travelling from Wolverhampton to the English countryside to Spain on various building projects.

BritishBrevity was somewhat averted by these first two seasons, which contain 13 episodes each rather than the usual six. A third season was planned but shelved after Creator/GaryHolton, one of the seven principal cast members, passed away.

It was eventually revived for a few years in 2002, DarkerAndEdgier. With the six remaining members, Creator/TimothySpall (Barry), Creator/ChristopherFairbank (Moxey), Creator/JimmyNail (Oz), Creator/TimHealy (Dennis), Creator/PatRoach (Bomber) and Creator/KevinWhately (Neville) returning and Creator/NoelClarke filling the gap as Wayne's son, Wyman.

The strong accents (especially Geordie), including regional slang terms and the obscure British cultural references, would probably make the series almost completely unintelligible to anyone from outside the United Kingdom.
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!!This programme provides examples of:
* AboveTheInfluence: Wayne reluctantly turns down Bomber's daughter because she's too young, vulnerable and only looking for attention (and he's been threatened with castration) and he mentions turning down two [[Music/TheRollingStonesBand Rolling Stones]] groupies who mistake him for Ronnie Wood because it goes against his code to trick them like that.
* AbusiveParents: Moxey and Oz. Oz is also guilty of being an abusive parent.
* AntiHero: Most of the main characters.
* ArtifactTitle: Season One was the only one to involve Germany.
%%* BadassLongcoat: Oz in Season Two.
%%* BarBrawl
* BerserkButton: Though Oz has a bit of a HairTriggerTemper in general, ''never'' harm or threaten one of his friends in front of him.
%%* BigBrotherMentor: Dennis.
* BigGuyLittleGuy: Oz (6'3") and Dennis (5'6") respectively.
* BlondeBrunetteRedhead: Barry and Moxey are blonds, Dennis, Oz and Neville are all brunettes and Bomber is a redhead while Wayne is raven haired.
* BookEnds: Series One begins with Dennis, Oz and Neville on the ferry on their way to Germany. The second of the hour-long Christmas specials ends with the exact same scenario, and Neville gives us a TitleDrop.
* BrainyBrunette: Dennis but he's not as clever as Barry.
* BritainIsOnlyLondon: Very much averted here, as almost every part of England is represented by the main seven. Neville, Oz and Dennis are [[UsefulNotes/NorthEastEngland Geordies]], Barry is from UsefulNotes/TheMidlands, Bomber is from UsefulNotes/TheWestCountry and Moxey is a [[UsefulNotes/{{Liverpool}} Liverpudlian]]. Wayne is the only Londoner.
* BrotherSisterIncest: Possibly. Kadi and Tatiana are probably only pretending to be brother and sister but it's never actually confirmed.
* BruiserWithASoftCentre: Bomber.
* BullyingADragon: Oz knocks Big Baz to the floor with a headbutt the moment the latter appears.
* ButtMonkey: Barry and sometimes, Moxey.
* TheCasanova: Wayne.
* CharacterDevelopment: Oz did some serious growing up between Season Two and the revival.
* ChekhovsGun: The videotapes in "A Home from Home".
* ChickMagnet: Wayne again.
* ChivalrousPervert: Wayne refuses to take advantage of teenage girls or trick Rolling Stones groupies who think he's Ronnie Wood into sex, and he seems to treat the women he sleeps with quite respectfully. He did cheat on his wife, ending his marriage, but, unlike other characters who mistreat their wives, he expresses genuine remorse for it.
* CrazyJealousGuy: The Turkish pimp and his knife. Ally Fraser shows the potential to be this when he warns Wayne off Vicky.
* ClingyJealousGirl: Neville's wife Brenda, in the first season.
* CoffinContraband: In "Last Rites", Oz develops a sideline in selling pornographic videos. When his mate Headly Irwin dies, Oz tries to smuggle the video tapes back to Britain in Headly's coffin.
* ContinuityNod:
** In the first episode, Neville acquired an embarrassing tattoo on his arm whilst drunk and couldn't afford to have it removed (by series 2, he has had the scroll with the offending text tattooed over in solid black). When he briefly appears shirtless in the 2002 revival, it's still there.
** Neville takes on extra work during Series 1 as Brenda wants to re-do their bathroom. In Series 2, Neville mentions that he still hasn't got around to re-doing the bathroom after two years.
* CloudCuckoolander: Moxey has his moments.
* DarkerAndEdgier: The 2002 revival had Bomber suffering from a serious illness and Moxey and Dennis struggling with extreme poverty. Also featured drugs, hitmen, organised crime, an illegal immigrant almost forced into prostitution, and the various issues surrounding the use of gangmasters providing East European labour on the Middlesbrough Bridge contract.
* DeadpanSnarker: Often Wayne.
* DomesticAbuse: Vicky is the target of this from Ally Fraser. Moxey comes from a family with a violent stepfather who molests his sister.
* EmbarrassingTattoo: Neville, who is the nicest of the characters and happily married to Brenda, wakes up after a night of drinking to find "Neville Loves Lotte" tattooed on his arm. He doesn't even ''know'' anyone called Lotte.
* FakeShemp: When Creator/GaryHolton died mid-way through recording the second season, some on-the-hoof rewrites enabled the series to go ahead with his character featured throughout, although the extant footage of him was spread noticeably thinly. As they had filmed all of the exterior scenes with Wayne in them but had not started any of the interior scenes, they decided to dress one of the production team in a wig to look like Wayne for backshots during indoor scenes to keep some form of continuity going.
%%zce* FanserviceExtra: There were a few of these in the Spanish episodes.
%%zce* FilleFatale: Bomber's daughter Tracey (though this was seemingly an act to get attention).
%%zce* FriendlessBackground: Moxey.
* FunWithAcronyms: DIMNOBB!
%%zce* GentleGiant: Bomber.
%%zce* GoldDigger: Tatiana and Vicky.
%%zce* HappilyMarried: Neville and Brenda (most of the time).
%%zce* TheHedonist: Wayne and in some ways, Oz.
%%zce* HeterosexualLifePartners: Dennis and Oz and arguably Moxey and Barry as well.
%%zce* HouseHusband: Neville at the beginning of Series 2.
%%zce* IHaveNoSon: Oz in Series 3.
%%zce* IntrepidReporter: Nikki Miles.
%%zce* JerkAss: Ally Fraser, Geoffrey Granger, Arthur Pringle, [=MacGowan=], and Tarquin Pearce.
%%zce* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Oz (sometimes).
%%zce* LadyKillerInLove: Wayne with Christa.
* LastEpisodeThemeReprise: The very last episode plays out with "Breakin' Away", the opening theme from Season 1.
* LastNameBasis: Moxey. His first name is Albert, but he rarely uses it.
%%zce* LovableRogue: Oz, Moxey, and Wayne.
%%zce* LovableSexManiac: Wayne.
* TheMagnificentSevenSamurai: It’s in full effect given that the series is about a RagTagBunchOfMisfits with seven members.
* {{Mooks}}: Ally Fraser and Mickey Startup both have them. Big Baz could be considered a [[TheDragon dragon]].
* MysteriousPast: Moxey and Colin.
* NakedPeopleAreFunny: The skinny dip in Spain.
* NativeAmericanCasino: The revival series had a plot involving our heroes demolishing a historic bridge in England, and rebuilding it across a canyon in Arizona to provide access to a Native American casino. This is a ShoutOut to an urban legend relating to the sale of the old London Bridge and its re-erection in Arizona as a tourist attraction.
* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: A disgraced former Member of Parliament who reeks of erudition and corruption in equal measure, plugging his prison memoirs with the intent on making them a bestseller? Fair to say Geoffrey Granger is a not particularly subtle parody of Creator/JeffreyArcher.
* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: Oz and Bomber.
* OnlySaneEmployee: Dennis, frequently.
* OopNorth: Not Derbyshire though, which is the South as far as Dennis is concerned.
* PinkIsForSissies: Bomber's response when Neville wants to paint the hut pink.
* PornStash: 'Last Rites'.
* PowCamp: Series One, frequently. Multiple Shout-Out to those 1950s British [=PoW=] films - ''Film/TheWoodenHorse'' in particular. Series Four has various Shout-Out to ''Film/TheBridgeOnTheRiverKwai'' with Barry in the Colonel Nicholson role at times.
* PrisonRape: Apparently almost happened to Geoffrey Granger. Luckily for him, Oz was around to help.
* ProtagonistCentredMorality: When Oz mistreats people he's an anti-hero that you root for. When a character like Herr Grunwald or Arthur Pringle mistreat the group then they are a villain deserving of humiliation.
* ReallyGetsAround: Wayne.
* ReplacedTheThemeTune: It deliberately changed its opening and closing themes for each new series or special.
* RightInFrontOfMe: Barry with Terry Leather.
* SecondEpisodeIntroduction: Moxey.
* SecretSquatter: In the second series, the gang are staying in an empty mansion that is being converted into a retirement home. Barry hears a local ghost story about how the mansion is haunted, and after hearing the story food starts disappearing from the refrigerator and objects start moving when the gang is out working. Barry thinks this is proof that the ghost story is true, but Oz gets to the bottom of the mystery by putting superglue on the fridge door handle; it turns out the "ghost" was a homeless man who had been squatting at the house and hiding in a cupboard during the day. They give him some new clothes and money, and send him on his way instead of calling the police.
* SensitiveGuyAndManlyMan: Barry and Wayne, this also applies to Neville and Oz.
* SexySecretary: Dagmar and Christa.
** Neville has one to lust over in series three, [[Series/LifeOnMars2006 Annie Cartwright]] no less.
** Averted in several directions by Dagmar, who seems to be developing a genuine relationship with Dennis (estranged from his wife) - until their night in a hotel is spoilt when the rest of the Brits turn up, having burnt down their hut in a drunken prank gone drastically wrong.
* SexyStewardess: Wayne and Barry try to pull two sexy stewardesses in Series One.
* SitcomCharacterArchetypes:
** The Big Mouth: Oz.
** The Dork: Barry.
** The Sage: Dennis.
** Neville is both the Square and the Stick.
** The Wisecracker: Oz and Wayne.
* SleazyPolitician: Geoffrey Granger.
* SmugSnake: Ally Fraser. And Geoffrey Granger even more so. And [[DoubleAgent Tarquin bloody Pearce]].
* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: Wyman is one for Wayne, though in name rather than by character.
* SympatheticAdulterer: Bomber who frequently visits brothels despite being married with 5 children.
* ThirdPersonPerson: Bomber.
* TitleDrop: In the closing scene of the final episode, courtesy of Neville.
* TookALevelInBadass: Between seasons two and three Brenda goes from a simpering housewife to a hard-nosed businesswoman.
* TrashTheSet: Takes place at the end of season one when [[spoiler: Wayne inadvertently burns the hut down]].
* UglyGuyHotWife: Barry and Tatiana.
* TheUnintelligible: Oz with his strong accent in the first two seasons. Lampshaded by Moxey: "Nobody understands a tossing word you're saying."
* TheVamp: Tatiana.
* VillainsOutShopping: When Oz storms into Ally Fraser's office while Dennis is meeting with him and chins Fraser's dragon, Big Baz, a shocked Dennis explains, "He was only going for a Tandoori chicken!"
* WhatDidIDoLastNight: How Neville ends up with the aforementioned EmbarrassingTattoo.
* WrittenInAbsence:
** When Creator/GaryHolton (Wayne) died during the filming of season two, his presence was often accounted for by explaining he was elsewhere at the time. In the 2002 series his character was written out as having died of a heart defect.
** Creator/PatRoach was too ill to appear in what would be the last season in 2004. He sadly died during filming of that two-hour special. In a touching scene, Dennis reads a letter from Bomber to the rest of the group while they are all dining in a restaurant, where he explains his reasons for not having joined them. The group lift their glasses and drink a toast; "To Bomber!"
* YouWouldntHitAGuyWithGlasses: Barry tries this tactic when Ally Fraser's goons show up at Thornely Manor to beat up the striking builders. It doesn't work, but the fighting prowess of some of the other lads means he avoids serious injury anyway.
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