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| "Open All Hours Pilot" |
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The Pilot episode of Open All Hours was aired in a program called Seven of One, which contained seven separate pilots for possible regular sitcoms. Open All Hours succeded to have its own, as did Prisoner and Escort (which became Porridge, also starred by Ronnie Barker)
Plot
This episode introduces the series characters and many of the series' recurring themes.
We meet Arkwright (Ronnie Barker), the owner of a grocer shop in South Yorkshire who stutters all the time and specifically at the most delicate situation, with humoristic result. Arkwright is extremely mean and is always looking to new ways to grab at least one more penny from his customers and spend as little as possible, or even better, spend nothing.
Arkwright employs his own nephew, Granville (David Jason), as his delivery boy and aide. Granville is a young man, who is always thinking about the sense of life, specially about his self-esteem, his need to get out of the shop and explore what life can offer him, and obviously his need to find girls, which finds very difficult because he finishes working at 9 pm every day. Arkwright does not like this, and is always trying to keep Granville with his feet on the ground. (In the pilot we can hear one of Arkwright's catchphrases: "Gr-Granville, f-fetch yer cloth"). In this episode, Granville wanders around the own in the shop's delivery bycicle, watching young women and young couples, and feeling alone and sad. Anyway, at the end of the episode, Granville manages to date a girl, at 9pm, of course.
The episode also introduces us to Nurse Gladys Emmanuel (in the pilot played by Sheila Brennan, which was replaced in the regular series by Lynda Baron). Arkwright is in love with Nurse Gladys, who shows no interest to Arkwright's advances. At the few times that she accepts a date with him, she is disappointed because of his extreme meanness, and his unwillingness to leave the shop alone for more than one hour. We also learn that she is always worried that Arkwright is going to disturb her mother (who is not going be shown on the whole series). In the pilot, Arkwright feigns a twisted arm to receive Nurse Gladys' attention. Anyway, she does not believe him, and punishes him treating with pain his arm, and forcing him to drink a sour medicine.
We can also see the strange mix of Arkwright's customers. One customer in the pilot (played by Yootha Joyce) is a woman with a troubled family life, which uses her baby's pram to transport the return bottles (Arkwright jokes telling her that she should keep the bottles and return the baby).
At end, we see Arkwright, with a reflection of the episode's events.