Eric Chappell, writer.

EricTheWeary

Writer of Rising Damp and other sitcoms has died at the age of 88. 

One of the great sitcoms, lovely legacy to leave. 

RIP. 

Redlester

A very nice idea for a tribute thread. Yes, what a fine and funny writer he was. 

edit- just want to add that all of the characters in Rising Damp were beautifully written, acted and realised. But a special shout out for the character of Philip. At a time when so many ethnic minority characters on tv were little more than crude caricatures, EC and Don Warrington made Philip a three dimensional protagonist with a steely, understated dignity.  

Philly_Q

I had to go and look him up to see what else he'd written... Only When I Laugh, as I'd thought, but also a couple of rather less significant sitcoms which I actually have fond memories of - Home To Roost and Fiddlers Three.

I was going to say that Fiddlers Three must surely be the only sitcom ever written about an accounts department, but in fact it was a "remake" of his first sitcom, The Squirrels (I don't remember that one).

I did a double take on his Wiki page when I saw that he married Elizabeth Taylor in 1959... then I saw it was Muriel Elizabeth Taylor.

RIP

Redlester

Home to Roost was quite good. 

I suspected this as well, but he also wrote The Bounder. I love this series, which is all but forgotten. I remember it being on when I was little, but I was too young to make sense of it then. I 
actually rewatched most of it a couple of years ago when it was available on Youtube, and I thought it was wonderful. 

The whole thing brings to mind an era when there were far more sitcoms, and certainly far more on ITV. There was a lot of rubbish put out, but they made so many of them that by the law of averages the amount of sheer high quality sitcoms was probably higher.

I do wish we could try to get back to something like that in the future. Nothing like a good sitcom!  

Philly_Q

Redlester said:

The whole thing brings to mind an era when there were far more sitcoms, and certainly far more on ITV. There was a lot of rubbish put out, but they made so many of them that by the law of averages the amount of sheer high quality sitcoms was probably higher.

Yeah, there were certainly a lot more sitcoms!  The rule of thumb in out house was that ITV sitcoms were almost invariably worse than BBC ones, but that didn't stop us watching them!  ITV kept churning out one-series wonders like That Beryl Marston, Chintz, Split Ends, Bottle Boys.... but we loved them.

(Eric Chappell was a level or two above those)