Last of the Summer Wine (TV Series) Cheering Up Gordon (1976) User Reviews

The Scarborough mini break continues.

[Sleepin_Dragon · 8/10 · 25 February 2016]

Still enjoying a mini break in Scarborough, Foggy's first to arrive and has no problem in waking up Compo and Cleggy. Foggy sets off for a fresh water swim, alone. He suffers a dose of hypothermia after it, getting no sympathy.

OK so there are some horrendous switches in filming, camera to film looks patchy at parts, but who cares, the episode is full of charm.

The best we've seen of Nora Batty and Wally, naturally I've been a lifelong fan of hers, but he was such a sweet performer too, they were a great duo. As were Ivy and Sid, we see in this one how Ivy's a woman of romance and passion, probably married the wrong man as a young woman.

It's been a really fun few episodes. Something sweet and cosy, I wish they'd done another later holiday episode like this one.

8/10.

Holidays part 2

[keysam-02610 · 9/10 · 8 July 2022]

It's Sunday, and Foggy's idea of a holiday is a pre-breakfast dip in the North Sea followed by "church parade". The other two are about as impressed as you might think.

Then they decided they need to cheer up perpetually glum fisherman Gordon.

Meanwhile, there are a couple of laugh out loud moments from Nora & Wally and even more from Sid & Ivy. The latter is reading a romantic magazine ("My Love", beach edition apparently) the semi-erotic content of which leads her to take Sid to task for his failings in that department.

The trio are still trying to cheer up Gordon, which they insist means him acquiring feminine companionship. Gordon sensibly gives them the slip & finds his own companion back at the boarding house, leaving Clegg, Foggy & Compo to shake off Compo's "catch" - some women he found and "pulled" by telling them he worked on an oil rig.

Good episode with lots of fun moments and quite a few that made me laugh out loud. Unusually, Gordon will be back later too, which makes for a nice bit of continuity. As Compo is his Uncle Bill, it would have been great if he had stayed long term but it would probably have had to be another actor as Philip Jackson had other roles like Inspector Japp in Poirot to go to.

On the pull

[Prismark10 · 6/10 · 30 June 2016]

I always wondered what the women in Last of the Summer Wine saw in their men. Wally Batty seems to care more of his pigeons and at least Nora begrudgingly likes the attention from Compo deep down. The same with Ivy and Sid, with Ivy appearing to be even more man hating and Sid with an eye for the dolly birds. It looks like whatever spark they all had extinguished years ago.

Here we see Ivy reading a romantic novel and dreaming of being swept off her feet by a dark rugged, handsome man and all she has to look forward to is Sid from a greasy café. Even stranger, they actually talk about sex while sunbathing it must have been the only time we see both of them speaking in such an intimate manner.

We are still in Scarborough; Foggy goes swimming in the freezing sea and gets hypothermia. Compo wants to being his nephew Gordon out of his shell. He is more interested in fishing and wants to avoid them.

Compo scrubs himself up and smartens up and pulls four women in a bar. one each for for the trio plus Gordon. We never see the women but hear them cackling outside the guest house. The others are not interested. Gordon meanwhile finds a nice girl visiting from their home town and seems to have struck up a rapport.

The episode is memorable for the little intimate moments and Compo the one being the man about town, pulling at the disco. It is surprisingly how often he smartened up in the early days, he was not always scruffy.