End of Part One

"End of Part One" was a British television comedy sketch show written by David Renwick and Andrew Marshall and produced by London Weekend Television. It ran for two series on ITV, from 1979 to 1980 and was an attempt at a TV version of "The Burkiss Way". The first series concerned the lives of Norman and Vera Straightman, who had their lives interrupted by various television personalities of the day. The second series was mainly a straight succession of parodies of TV shows of the time, including "Larry Grayson's Generation Game" and "Nationwide".

The cast included Sue Holderness, Denise Coffey, Fred Harris, Dudley Stevens, David Simeon and Tony Aitken. Coffey had appeared in "The Burkiss Way's" first 6 episodes, but Harris was the only permanent cast member to appear in "End of Part One". One of the directors was future feature film director Geoffrey Sax.

Marshall and Renwick blamed the show's relative lack of success at its being shown on a Sunday afternoon, and decided not to write another series because LWT would not move it to a more favourable time slot. [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0237963] The series has not been repeated or released on video or DVD since its original run, although thirteen out of the fourteen shows still exist in the archives.

The programme got its name from the style of presentation used by ITV at the time, where a slide saying "End Of Part One" in the style of a programme's credits would be played out before the commercial break (and also repeated for "Part Two", "End Of Part Two", etc., and the style was then borrowed by Channel 4, UK Gold, Granada Plus, and Channel 5).

External links

* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/articles/e/endofpartone_1299001043.shtml Comedy Guide - "End of Part One"] at bbc.co.uk
* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0237963/ "End of Part One"] at the Internet Movie Database