Pynchon--glamour grudges? (fwd)

[Andrew Foley]

Lycidas wrote


<snip>

<Question: Last night I watched a British Sitcom on the Tube.
A Television repairman got lost and then warped back in time
(from the 1990s to the 1940s), or did he? He went into a
public bar, where he was accused of being a German spy by a
the bar-man. He nearly got lucky with the bar-man's daughter
and he was nearly killed by a German rocket. Can any one
tell me the name of this sitcom?>

It's _Goodnight, Sweetheart_, created and produced for the BBC by Laurence
Marks and Maurice Gran, who wrote the better episodes (alas, Marks and Gran
have had some experience in US sitcom, and commissioned other writers to
write many episodes - not the BBC tradition at all).

You've just seen the first episode.  Only another 70 or so to go.

The second episode (IIRC - it was about eight years ago, so my recall of
exactly which episode it was could be faulty) features the largest studio
set ever built for a British comedy, a recreation of a Tube (that's London
Underground, not TV) station platform, for a sequence in which Gary Sparrow
(played by Nicholas Lyndhurst) has to shelter for the night during a German
air-raid.  Yes, he >does< go through a time warp between the 90s and the 40s
in every episode.

Its popularity with the British public dwindled after Dervla Kirwan (who
played Phoebe Bamford) and Michelle Holmes (who played Yvonne Sparrow)
decided to quit, and were replaced by Elizabeth Carling and Emma Amos.
While it struggled on for about thirty episodes thereafter, the BBC's
decision to cancel the series was inevitable.  But you've got a long way to
go before that point is reached in the series.