On the Buses

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On The Buses

Movie poster for ON THE BUSES 1971 theatrical release
Format Comedy
Created by Ronald Wolfe
Ronald Chesney
Starring Reg Varney
Bob Grant
Cicely Courtneidge (first series)
Doris Hare (series 2-7)
Michael Robbins (series 1-6)
Anna Karen
Stephen Lewis
No. of series 7
No. of episodes 74
Production
Producer(s) London Weekend Television
Running time 30 minutes per episode
Broadcast
Original channel ITV
Original run February 28, 1969 – May 20, 1973
External links
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

On The Buses was a British situation comedy created by Ronald Wolfe and Ronald Chesney. The pair had already had successes with The Rag Trade and Meet the Wife for the BBC. The BBC rejected this offering and so the duo turned to the ITV company London Weekend Television. The show was accepted and although the critics disliked it, the show was a huge hit with the viewers.

Stan Butler (Reg Varney) works as a bus driver for the Luxton & District Traction Company. He lives at home with his bingo-loving, widowed and overbearing mother (Cicely Courtneidge, later Doris Hare), his frumpy sister Olive (Anna Karen) and his lazy brother-in-law Arthur (Michael Robbins). The bane of Stan's life is Inspector Cyril "Blakey" Blake (Stephen Lewis) who is often checking up on him and his conductor and best friend, the cheerful, bucktoothed Jack Harper (Bob Grant), and threatening them with the sack for lateness and untidiness. Not coincidentally, Blakey sports a toothbrush moustache and general appearance very much in the image of Adolf Hitler. His catchphrase is "I 'ate you Butler!" and "you've made my day" In later years Arthur and then Stan left the series, Olive worked for the bus company and Blakey moved in to board at Mum's house.

Seventy-four half-hour episodes were made. Also popular were the spin-off feature films made by Hammer Film Productions (On The Buses, 1971; Mutiny On The Buses, 1972; Holiday On The Buses, 1973) set on a Pontin's holiday camp. On The Buses was Britain's top box-office film at the time, surpassing even the James Bond movie Diamonds Are Forever (1971).

Like several other London-made ITV sitcoms of the era, the format of On The Buses was sold to American television, where it was remade by NBC as Lotsa Luck, starring Dom DeLuise, running for 24 episodes in 1973–74. The American version failed to succeed and has never been screened in Britain.

The series was originally recorded at London Weekend's studios at Wembley. In late 1972 the show relocated to the company's new facilities on the South Bank of the River Thames; here it was discovered that the outside entrance doors to the main and secondary studios were too small to accommodate the double-decker buses that were used in the series. Therefore single-decker buses were used and a plywood mock-up of a second deck was lowered from a lighting rig onto each bus.

Video taped external shots were also an integral part of the series. LWT came to an arrangement with the former Eastern National bus company to use their buses located at the Wood Green bus garage in north London. (For the purpose of the TV series, they were under the ownership of 'Luxton and District'.) One of the termini for the buses was 'Cemetery Gates' and for this, LWT used the entrance to Lavender Hill Cemetery in Enfield, north London, a stone's throw from Reg Varney's home at the time.

[edit] Merchandise

[edit] References in Popular Culture

  • On The Buses was referred to often on the now axed Australian Austereo radio show Get This, featuring Tony Martin, Ed Kavalee and Richard Marsland. Tony would often break into an impersonation of Blakey, and the laughs ensued.

[edit] See also