Brilliant

One of the many beauties of British television, is that they never overstay their welcome. Whilst the U.S. Constantly churns out incredible big budget shows, you often feel that of the obligatory (it seems) 24 episodes, some are just...... padding. Filler episodes to meet the network quota.

However, with a lot of British TV (especially the early 70's to late 80's), you got JUST enough. It kept you wanting more, but you didn't always get it. There are those that complain about only 12 episodes of the young ones, or (in this case), 6 episodes of going straight, but to me, they are never allowed to rot, or grow tiresome (like so many of my American favourites).

In the case of going straight, what we got was 6 episodes of well thought out "fish out of water" television. We know the character(s), and in more than one episode of porridge, Ronnie Barker was allowed to crack the Fletcher front, and give us some heartfelt late night confessions of a caricature who actually had been mentally rehabilitated years before, but didn't quite know what to do with it.

Throw into that mix some of the last few months of work from the incredibly likeable Richard Beckinsale (a man Barker would later claim was the son he didn't have), and you have an amazing sitcom with more character layers than several of it's competitors, both then and now.

I won't get into the whole "is it better than porridge" debate, all I'll say is if you want some of those beautifully written character moments of Fletch and Godber locked up together all night revisited on a grander scale, watch this.