Last of the Summer Wine: Brilliant flat-capped whimsy This may sound an odd thing to say, but Last of the Summer Wine always reminded me of being young. When I was growing up in the Eighties, my parents always watched it. For my father, no Sunday teatime was complete without half an hour of flat-capped whimsy, culminating in three elderly Yorkshiremen careering down a hill in a bathtub. For my mother, no Sunday teatime was complete without sighing, "Oh no, dear, not this nonsense again," before watching it anyway, while trying to suppress her laughter. Who was your favourite character in Last of the Summer Wine? When I say Last of the Summer Wine is the most formulaic sitcom I've ever seen, I don't mean it unkindly. The formula was an important part of its appeal. The programme's plots were not all identical (in latter years, they tended to feature less extravagantly physical comedy) but if you were asked to describe what happens in a typical episode, I suspect you'd say the following. Three elderly Yorkshiremen (Windily Pompous, Lovably Boorish, and Peter Sallis) meet in a pub or café, from which they are swiftly ejected on account of misbehaviour by Lovably Boorish. Windily Pompous declares that they should spend their day doing something useful, which almost invariably involves the construction of some doomed mode of transport - the fabled bathtub, say, or a home-made hang-glider. Nora Batty (right, played by the late Kathy Staff) and Compo (played by the late Bill Owen) PHOTO: BBC The hillside chosen for the doomed mode of transport's maiden voyage proves, without fail, to be the same hillside on which another elderly local, Weasel-Faced Adulterer, is holding a secret romantic tryst with Tarty Mistress. The episode ends with the concurrence of three events: the crashing of the doomed mode of transport into a dry-stone wall; the discovery of the secret romantic tryst, taking place behind said dry-stone wall; and the arrival of Weasel-Faced Adulterer's seething wife. A view across Holmfirth, West Yorkshire, the location for Last of the Summer Wine GETTY IMAGES The reason this formula could be followed for so long is that it became more important than the cast. During Last of the Summer Wine's 37-year run, many of its stars left or died. It made little difference; they would be replaced by a similar character played by another actor. The Windily Pompous character, for instance, has been Foggy, played by Brian Wilde, Seymour, played by Michael Aldridge, and Blamire, played by Michael Bates. It was like a football club: if you lost a striker, you bought a new one. The players changed, but the club remained. To criticise the programme's lack of freshness would be absurd. Nobody tuned in for freshness. They tuned in for familiarity. The same plot; the same affable, luckless old buffers; the same coven of biddies carping about their menfolk over tea and buns; the same soothing backdrop of Dales and cobbles. Last of the Summer Wine showed us a past that was quaint, silly, and now sadly out of reach.