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Trivia / The Likely Lads

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  • Dawson Casting: James Bolam (born in 1935) and Rodney Bewes (born in 1937) were both older than their characters, who are both explicitly stated to have been born in 1944.
  • Hostility on the Set: Hoo boy. James Bolam and Rodney Bewes were never friends off-screen, although they sometimes kept up a pretence that they were because they thought the public expected it. By the time The Movie came out, though, they were no longer on speaking terms, the pair having fallen out as a result of Bewes relating a personal anecdote about Bolam during an interview. Three decades later, Bewes claimed that they had not spoken since, in addition to which he claimed that Bolam was refusing to allow repeats of the show to be broadcast, which prevented him (Bewes) from receiving any royalties which may have arisen. After Bewes's death in 2017, Bolam (who had long refused to talk about the show) denied that there had been any rift, in addition to which he also denied that he was able to block repeats from being broadcast note .
  • Missing Episode: The Likely Lads ran for 20 episodes across three series from 1964-66. Ten episodes are lost; the surviving episodes include three from Series 2 ("The Last of the Big Spenders", which was recovered in 2001, and "A Star is Born" and "Faraway Places", which were recovered in 2018) and two from Series 3, while audio exists for a further four episodes from Series 3. Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? is intact, as is the 1967-68 radio version which adapted sixteen television scripts (including nine of the lost TV episodes).
  • What Could Have Been:
    • Jutta, Terry's estranged German wife, was due to appear in the last episode of the first series ("End of an Era", in which Bob and Thelma get married), but after filming her first scene, the writers decided against having both male characters married and so shelved the idea. Despite this, April Walker (the actress who played Jutta) remains on the end credits for that episode.
    • Plans for a third series were put on hold as a result of the Ronnie Barker vehicle Seven of One, a 1973 series in which Barker appeared in seven different situations from different writers, each of which was a try-out for a possible series. The BBC decided that they liked "Prisoner and Escort", one of two episodes written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, and it went on to become Porridge.note 

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