I won't be surprised if The Royle Family gets another repeat run this weekend on GOLD. Would be great if the The Mrs Merton Show also gets acquired by UKTV.
I'm pretty sure the Debbie McGee episode wasn't the first one, but I may be wrong.
The BBC Genome listings seem to completely disagree with what's on Wikipedia, so not sure if that's the production order or what's on the DVDs.
It looks as if, assuming Radio Times was correct at the time, the Debbie McGee ep was the first to transmit. Either way I'm not surprised they didn't use the "other" first episode given a certain guest, and how an incident during the recording of it was the subject of a court case a few years back.
The 1999 Royle Family Christmas special has been added to the BBC One schedule on Friday night.
I would've preferred to have seen The Queen of Sheba, not least because Christmas specials in the middle of Summer make me feel ill, but then again the scene with Caroline and Ricky in the bathroom really does show how well Caroline's acting and writing could reach.
The 1999 Royle Family Christmas special has been added to the BBC One schedule on Friday night.
Good choice - that was probably the episode where it became much more than just another comedy.
I'd argue the penny dropped in the last episode of the first series when Denise was getting married, which I think tugged on the heartstrings a bit, especially towards the end when her and Jim are getting ready to leave.
Having said that though, the moment Denise's waters break is a fantastic piece of drama. It was great hearing Ricky explaining how the tears were genuine because of how much Caroline reminded him of his own daughter, and that the director was adamant he got the scene in one take, not that Ricky or Caroline had it in them to do another. Apparently Caroline wanted Ricky on board after watching him in a film (I can't remember the name but it was featured one of those Gold documentaries) and cited his ability to have you laughing in one scene and reducing you tears in another. That skill was beautifully utilised throughout the show, especially in The Queen of Sheba when Jim fights back tears while saying his goodbyes to Norma.
Just typing all this out reminds me of just how fantastic that show was, right through from the writing to the performances.
I do hope Gold repeats their Behind the Sofa documentary at some point. It was actually a very good programme, better than the BBC programme 'We Love the Royle Family' in my opinion.
It holds the accolade AFAIK for being the only time Caroline and Craig Cash were interviewed together. I know Caroline was on Parkinson once but they were both considerably coy over granting interviews.
I remember seeing an interview with Craig, where he states that after the first read-through (with Kathy Burke as Cheryl), the BBC tried to turn The Royle Family into a more conventional format. Caroline said "let us do it our way, or you're not getting anymore Mrs Merton".
Ironically, The Royle Family was so successful, within a year the BBC didn't seem to care about Mrs Merton, as she never saw the light of day again. A big shame I think. She was such a great, warm and funny character.