Still Open All Hours

Still Open All Hours is a British sitcom created for the BBC by Roy Clarke, and starring David Jason and James Baxter. It is the sequel to the sitcom Open All Hours, which both Clarke and Jason worked on throughout its 26-episode run from 1976 to 1985, following a 40th Anniversary Special in December 2013 commemorating the original series. The sitcom's premise focuses on the life of a much older Granville, who now runs his late uncle's grocery shop with the assistance of his son, continuing to sell products at higher prices alongside seeking to be with his love interest. Unlike the original series, the cast for Still Open All Hours includes a more regular group of characters and additional side-plots. It has featured the return of Lynda Baron, Stephanie Cole, and Maggie Ollerenshaw as their characters from Open All Hours. Although the special received poor reviews, it attracted positive viewing figures, with the sitcom airing a total of 41 episodes across six series. A seventh series had been commissioned in 2019, but was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and despite plans to record it, the series was eventually cancelled in 2023, with the BBC saying it had no plans for any new episodes. Premise Like Open All Hours, the sitcom is set within a small grocer's shop in the suburb of Balby, within Doncaster, South Yorkshire, and focuses on the life of Granville (David Jason) – now much older and the shop's owner, having grown into the same sort of person as his late uncle Arkwright was by learning from him his many ways of selling to customers. Assisting him in running the shop is Leroy (James Baxter), Granville's son by one of his previous girlfriends, who maintains a rather robust love life with several girls but struggles to cope with the work and sales approach of his father, much as Granville did with Arkwright. Granville maintains a love life with the sweet but absent-minded Mavis (Maggie Ollerenshaw) who loves him in return, but finds his path to her often blocked by her sister Madge (Brigit Forsyth), a miserable woman who does not like men and chooses to keep Mavis from following a relationship with Granville. Both are regular customers of the shop, alongside others from the neighbourhood onto whom Granville tries to offload products which he has bought and had little success selling on under their original identity and price.