Alan JW Bell, who has died aged 85 after affected by dementia, relished producing and directing the BBC’s whimsical sitcom Final of the Summer season Wine for 29 years. Taking up in 1982 for the sixth collection, 9 years after the present’s launch, he more and more made a showcase of the luxurious West Yorkshire countryside round Holmfirth, and launched extra slapstick and madcap stunts.
Interviewed for Morris Brilliant and Robert Ross’s e book 30 Years of Final of the Summer season Wine (2000), Bell recalled: “The BBC had, it appears, recognised my filmic bent and astutely realised that the excessive proportion of location filming in every episode wouldn’t be an issue in my arms.”
He additionally took account of Ronnie Hazlehurst’s incidental music. “After I learn a script, I see the boys strolling throughout the countryside and I additionally hear the music,” defined Bell. “I inform the actors to stroll for some time earlier than they communicate.”
However his desire for extensive panorama photographs, within the author Roy Clarke’s sitcom that includes three aged males reliving their childhood, was not shared by Brian Wilde, who starred as Foggy Dewhurst, alongside Invoice Owen as Compo Simmonite and Peter Sallis as Norman Clegg. The actor most popular the closeups of the trio talking their traces that had been favoured by the programme’s earlier producer-director, Sydney Lotterby, and known as for Lotterby’s return.
When Spike Milligan requested that Bell ought to make his 1982 sketch collection There’s a Lot of It About, this diplomatically paved the best way for Lotterby to work on the seventh collection of Final of the Summer season Wine, screened in 1983. However Bell was then again for 2 Christmas specials and all future episodes, stamping his mark on what grew to become the world’s longest-running sitcom, which ultimately completed in 2010 after 31 collection.
He quickly dropped all of the studio scenes filmed at BBC Tv Centre in London, with a purpose to shoot totally on location. He additionally expanded the solid of supporting actors because the programme elevated in frequency within the late Eighties to at least one collection yearly. Jean Fergusson, Juliette Kaplan, Sarah Thomas, Thora Hird, Dora Bryan, Jean Alexander and June Whitfield have been among the many feminine actors who joined over time – including to the formidable Kathy Employees (Nora Batty) and Jane Freeman (Ivy) – whereas the triumvirate of henpecked males at varied occasions included Michael Aldridge, Frank Thornton, Keith Clifford, Russ Abbot, Burt Kwouk and Brian Murphy.
Bell additionally gave the nod to Owen’s request – shortly earlier than the actor’s demise in 1999 – to amend a script in order that Nora Batty would lastly kiss Compo. When the sitcom was dropped at an finish after the 2010 collection, he was deeply damage and aggravated {that a} farewell version couldn’t be made.
Bell’s different nice tv success lay in bringing to the display in 1981 Douglas Adams’s sci-fi satire The Hitchhiker’s Information to the Galaxy, first made for radio three years earlier. He was not truly a fan of sci-fi, however mentioned in 2016: “I attempted to be as unique as potential and no person may fault it on that. It was executed with numerous enthusiasm.” The manufacturing gained a Royal Tv Society award as most unique programme, and three Bafta awards for its visuals and sound, however an anticipated second collection was not forthcoming, in keeping with Bell, as a result of Adams insisted that it must be made by the producer of the radio collection.
Born in London, Alan was the son of Agnes (nee Johnston), a dressmaker, and James Bell, a London Electrical energy Board cashier. He attended Selhurst grammar faculty, Croydon, then, following the household’s transfer to Scotland, Buckhaven highschool, Fife.
Nevertheless, he hated faculty, typically skipped classes and needed to get out into the world. His first job was as a projectionist on the Troxy cinema in Leven.
He joined the BBC as a movie editor at Ealing Studios in 1958 earlier than transferring to Tv Centre, the place he was a manufacturing assistant and assistant ground supervisor. He began utilizing his center initials to keep away from confusion with one other producer-director known as Alan Bell.
In 1979 he shot episodes of the Michael Palin comedy collection Ripping Yarns totally on location, on movie that was then proven to a dwell studio viewers to seize their response, which Bell described as “lower than responsive”. However that didn’t cease him implementing the identical course of for Final of the Summer season Wine, this time with higher outcomes, as he ingeniously used Owen, Employees and different solid members as warmup artists earlier than the screening.
Bell additionally produced and directed the BBC sitcoms The Hi there Goodbye Man (1984), starring Ian Lavender as a hapless gross sales rep, and Wyatt’s Watchdogs (1988), which featured Wilde and one other Summer season Wine actor, Trevor Bannister, as neighbourhood watch group leaders.
Later, for ITV, he directed the author Deric Longden’s poignant, autobiographical feature-length drama Misplaced for Phrases (1999), with Pete Postlethwaite as Longden and Hird portraying his eccentric mom’s slide into dementia. It gained an Worldwide Emmy award.
In retirement, Bell wrote the books Final of the Summer season Wine: From the Director’s Chair (2012) and A Hitch within the Galaxy (2016).
He’s survived by his spouse, Constance (additionally nee Bell), who acted underneath the title Constance Carling and whom he married in 1970, their daughter, Cheraine, and his sister, Erika.
