«Блумерс» – Недоснятый ситком с Ричардом Беккинсэйлом

1979 BBC sitcom

Bloomers is a short lived British sitcom starring Richard Beckinsale that aired on BBC2 in 1979. Only five episodes of the show were made before Beckinsale died suddenly from a heart attack just before a planned rehearsal for the sixth and final episode of the first series. Bloomers was immediately shelved, though the five completed episodes were broadcast later in the same year.

Stan is a worker for a small London flower business. The humour centred on the relationships between the workers and the scrapes they got into doing odd jobs in the gardens of houses in the district. Beckinsale's character, Stan, was apt to wind up in bed with lonely housewives, and equally apt to spend time with said housewives musing on philosophy and the pointlessness of life.

Writer James Saunders thought up the idea for Bloomers while talking with actor John Challis, who owned and worked at a garden centre, while taking a break from acting. Said Saunders: "The idea was based on fact. The local florist was telling me about the number of funny things that happened and I thought it would make a good series." Challis stated: "I remember the writer James Saunders was a customer at my garden centre and he wrote a script about my experiences. I gave the script to my agent who gave it to John Howard Davies at the BBC who was looking for a vehicle for Richard Beckinsale. So Bloomers was written with me in mind but I wasn't famous enough, but Richard Beckinsale was wonderful and I got an episode out of it!" The scene in episode three where Stan and Dingley attempt to steal Christmas trees from a roundabout was based on a real life incident with Challis. In the episode, Challis plays one of the policemen who busts up the theft. The five completed episodes of Bloomers were recorded prior to Christmas 1978. Due to an industrial dispute at the BBC, (the same dispute which delayed the recording of the final episode of Fawlty Towers), the recording of the sixth episode was postponed until 20 March, but it ended up never being recorded at all, due to Beckinsale's death the previous day.

Beckinsale's widow, Judy Loe, gave her approval for the five completed episodes to be broadcast. Bloomers aired from 27 September 1979 to 25 October 1979 on BBC2. Four of the episodes were given a repeat viewing the following year on BBC1 from 6 August 1980 to 27 August 1980. The show also aired in 1983 on ABC in Australia and the only publicly available recordings of Bloomers are from these broadcasts. Poor quality transfers of the five episodes are available to view on YouTube. Bloomers has never been aired again by the BBC, nor has there been any official release of the series.