John Esmonde

[steve56]

The Times reports :

John Esmonde was one half of a writing partnership which lasted 30 years and produced some of Britain?s most likeable situation comedies. Esmonde and Bob Larbey may not have had the bite or depth of other famous comedy teams such as Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, or Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais, but in their chosen field of good-natured, inoffensive humour they were unbeatable.

Although their first big success, Please, Sir!, was set in a tough inner London school, they found their most fruitful territory in suburbia with The Good Life and Ever Decreasing Circles. Gently pricking the conventions of middle-class respectability, The Good Life survived a slow start, with modest audiences and lukewarm critics, to be one of the most popular comedies of the 1970s. Seemingly endless repeats were a testament to its durability, and when in 2004 BBC viewers were asked to vote for their favourite sitcom, The Good Life made it into the top ten.

The writing, casting and comic premise of a man turning 40 who quits the rat race to live off the produce of his garden were an irresistible combination. Richard Briers and Felicity Kendal were the Surbiton rebels in constant but amicable conflict with their neighbours, an easygoing plastic toys executive (Paul Eddington) and his snobbish, domineering and humourless wife (a gift of a part for Penelope Keith, then little-known). The quartet could easily have tipped over into caricature, but Esmonde and Larbey were astute enough never to let this happen.

Ever Decreasing Circles also starred Briers (Esmonde and Larbey liked to return to the same actors), this time as an interfering and insufferable do-gooder who tries the patience of all around him, not least his extraordinarily forbearing wife (Penelope Wilton). The antithesis of the Briers character was a smooth-talking bachelor neighbour (Peter Egan), whose languid charm enabled him to have the upper hand.

Esmonde and Larbey were both from South London but when, on the back of their success, Esmonde moved to the Sussex coast, they decided to meet halfway, renting a shabby little office in Dorking where they would not be distracted by home comforts. They devised and wrote their shows together, acting out their characters and ad-libbing the dialogue before committing it to paper. The quirks of everyday conversation were a fertile source for their comedy.

John Gilbert Esmonde was born in Clapham, South London, in 1936 and first met Larbey when they were pupils at the Henry Thornton School. Although Esmonde was two years younger, they became firm friends and, after leaving school, both joined the same firm of block makers. Esmonde tried other jobs, including journalism, but none suited him, and with Larbey in the same situation, they decided to get together and write comedy scripts.

They wrote in the evenings and at weekends, while continuing with their daytime jobs. For three years their efforts produced little but rejection slips. However, in 1965 they were, at last, offered a radio series. This was Spare a Copper, which starred Kenneth Connor as a bungling policeman, with support from the veteran Deryck Guyler. It ran on and off for a year, and while it did not make Esmonde and Larbey rich, it gave them a foot on the ladder.

As they had committed themselves to writing full-time this was just as well. More radio work followed, including You?re Only Old Once (1968), starring Clive Dunn, playing as so often, older than his years, Guyler and Joan Sanderson; and Just Perfick (1969), adapted from the Larkins family novels by H. E. Bates.

But by now Esmonde and Larbey were established in television, and this became their main outlet. Their early writing for TV included material for the comedian Dick Emery, but their first series was Room at the Bottom, featuring a group of truculent maintenance men, which was transmitted on BBC1 in 1967. Soon afterwards came their breakthrough, though Please, Sir! was rejected by the BBC and three ITV companies before being taken up by London Weekend. Set in Fenn Street secondary modern school in South London, it became the most successful ITV comedy of its time. John Alderton led the cast as a young teacher trying to control an unruly class, with Guyler as the janitor and Joan Sanderson getting belated television recognition in her mid-fifties as the imperious assistant head. The humour was broad and boisterous and it found an audience.

The series spawned a spin-off, The Fenn Street Gang, which caught up with the students after they had left school, and a feature film. For a time Please, Sir! and The Fenn Street Gang ran simultaneously, a workload too taxing even for the highly productive Esmonde and Larbey, and other writers were brought in. There was a further spin-off when one of The Fenn Street Gang characters, a small-time crook played by George Baker, was given a series of his own, Bowler.

While still busy with The Good Life on the BBC, Esmonde and Larbey drew on their experience of National Service in the 1950s for the ITV series Get Some In! It charted the tensions between four young recruits to the RAF and a sadistic corporal, played by Tony Selby, who had had a similar role in The Fenn Street Gang. Get Some In!, which gave Robert Lindsay his first important role, ran for five series and was still drawing audiences of 13 million when Thames Television decided to take it off.

Esmonde and Larbey admitted that there was no magic formula and, because they wrote so much, there were inevitably flops. After the end of The Good Life in the late 1970s there was a particularly undistinguished crop of shows. Despite having Briers and Michael Gambon as leads, The Other One made little impact, and few now remember the football comedy, Feet First, or Now and Then, a child?s view of family life in the Second World War based on the writers? own experiences.

Ever Decreasing Circles (1984-87) was a return to form and it overlapped with the start of another long-running show, Brush Strokes, which followed the amorous pursuits of a chirpy decorator played by Karl Howman. It was bland and inconsequential but had a likeable charm.

Howman was also the star of Mulberry (1992), in which Esmonde and Larbey brought a darker element to situation comedy. Howman played a Grim Reaper charged with escorting a prickly spinster (Geraldine McEwan) into the next world. Their final show was Back to Earth (1995), which brought Briers back but went off quietly. Esmonde and Larbey then decided to go their own ways. Esmonde settled in Spain and wrote novels.

Esmonde married Georgina (Gina) Barton in 1960. She survives him.

John Esmonde, television comedy writer, was born on March 21, 1937. He died on August 10, 2008, aged 71

And another. The 1970s is leaving the building.

[Ace]

Your longest ever post Steve, OR have you discovered cut/copy/paste?

[colonel]

A very talented and dedicated writer. No drummer puns from me this time.

I am glad that the obit did not dwell on The Good Life, but mentioned Please, Sir! - which apart from both being set in south London was virtually its antithesis. They wrote four great sitcoms- and many other treasures.

I remember happy Thursday evenings at 830 with crisps and parents either side watching The Good Life; and Sunday nights at grandparents watching Ever Decreasing Circles. Please, Sir was before my time and Brush Strokes whilst I was at university- but I was aware of them alongside Galton and Simpson and Mortimer and Cooke as great sitcom teams in the Sitcom Golden Age.

[steve56]

Copy/Pasted from zetaminor.com it was last year i learned how to do it.