Here we're going right back to the very start with not only Britain's but the world's first recognised television sitcom, Pinwright's Progress, which was broadcast for two series totalling ten episodes in 1946 and 1947, so it's hardly surprising this one isn't widely known!

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Regarded as one of the very first television sitcoms, the first episode of Pinwright's Progress was broadcast on 29th November 1946, just 5 months after the BBC Television Service resumed on 7th June 1946 following the Second World War. Television had closed down in September 1939 at the outbreak of war. As with most early pre-war broadcasts most comedy then was either variety or televisation of stage plays either filmed at the theatre or remounted in the television studio at Alexandra Palace. But Pinwright's Progress broke the mould by created a half hour show especially for television where a regular slot was given over to a situation with regular ongoing characters in the same location. In this first case of a TV sitcom it was a work-based rather than domestic sitcom. It predates the US's first television sitcom by a year, their first foray into the format was the 15 minute domestic sitcom Mary Kay and Johnny which started on the DuMont Network on 17th November 1947.

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Pinwright's Progress starred James Hayter as Mr. J. Pinwright, owner of a small chain of small shops called Pinwright's, which boasts of being the smallest chain of shops in the world. Mr. Pinwright is pompous and a schemer with delusions of grandeur who has mad ideas to improve business to beat his hated rival Mr MacGillygally, a top-hat wearing toff (played by Clifford Buckton) over at the more upmarket MacGillygally's Stores. The rival character was originally intended to be named McGillycuddy but the BBC received complaints from a firm of solicitors called McGillycuddy who felt their name was being slighted so it was changed to MacGillygally. Pinwright has an attractive daughter called Maisie (played by Jill Christie) who is courted by all the local eligible bachelors, including Pinwright's dopey assistant Aubrey (played by I.T.M.A.'s Clarence Wright). But the sitcom focused on the staff and customers at one of Pinwright's stores and very much seems to be a precursor to Are You Being Served?, a sitcom which James Hayter would himself go into 30 years after this as Mr Tebbs. Mrs Sigsbee (played by Doris Palmer), is a wealthy regular customer who the staff must fawn over to appease. Like AYBS? a lot of humour involved staff and customers like Mrs Sigsbee dressing up in costumes, including a Christmas episode where they end up with multiple Father Christmas' much like The Father Christmas Affair in AYBS? with Mrs Sigsbee helping out dressed as the Fairy Queen. Other similarities to AYBS? include having a somewhat deaf octogenarian messenger boy called Ralph (played by 56 year old Leonard Sharp aged up) who is well past working but carries on anyway, much like Young Mr. Grace. Then there's the energetic but lovelorn Miss Peabody (played by Daphne Maddox) who seems to fit the Miss Brahms role. Clarence Wright as the young assistant Aubrey chasing Maisie seems to fit the Mr Lucas role. Also like AYBS? the humour was rather broad, the characters do break into song occassionally as well as dress up in costumes to attract business, there was lots of visual humour involving unusual sales techniques and props to grab customer attention that go wrong.

Other supporting characters include a seemingly unnamed Salesman (played by Charles Irwin) and two characters whose roles within the set-up are not clear from existing records; Sally Doolittle (played by Sara Gregory) and Mrs Rackstraw (played by Benita Lydal), who may well be the Mrs Sloombe type senior sales woman. Sam Hinton is a regular support player in different roles each time from a cabman to a male customer to a Major and any other one-off characters required much as AYBS? would use returning bit part players as different customers.

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Filmed at the BBC's then television studio at Alexandra Palace, fondly known as Ally Pally, two small archaic studios in a former Victorian canteen and tea room the BBC took over in 1936 where, pre and post war, they were experimenting with all kinds of ideas to find out what did and didn't work for television, trialling new technology and new formats. BBC Drama Repertory Company character actor John Glyn-Jones was engaged as producer for this first TV sitcom. He got the BBC Copyright department to contract Ted Kavanagh Associates to script a series of 6 episodes in September 1946. It's unclear from records whether it was Glyn-Jones or Ted Kavanagh who came up with the initial idea or whether they thrashed it out between them. Ted Kavanagh was famous as the writer of runaway radio comedy hit It's That Man Again (I.T.M.A.) a sketch show which relied on a set of madcap characters with catchphrases in looser regular settings. Whichever of them came up with the idea neither of them scripted the show in any case, Kavanagh acted as script editor after bringing in Rodney Hobson to script Pinwright's Progress, then still untitled, in September 1946. Whilst being developed the series was referred to in BBC Written Archives records as the Kavanagh Programme until a title was chosen. At the start of October 1946 Rodney Hobson submitted his synopsis for the planned series with character biographies for the main characters. The main idea each week was that Pinwright would come up with various hare-brained schemes to improve business, often taking ideas trialled by rival MacGillygally and managing to screw them up with his own staff doing their best to help but often hindering. These ideas often included trialling new departments or sidelines such as a gardening department, a radio department, a travel bureau and a snack bar.

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By the end of October all of the cast had been confirmed, with records showing James Hayter very keen to take the lead role in this experimental show. Apart from Clarence Wright, who was already well known from Ted Kavanagh's I.T.M.A. from Series 3 in 1941 onwards, Hayter was the only real star name attached, with the rest of the cast made up of largely supporting role actors of stage, radio and film. Even Clarence Wright, although in a hit radio show, was one of the lesser supporting players in I.T.M.A. not main player like Tommy Handley, Jack Train, Dorothy Summers etc. Actress Eleanor Summerfield guest starred in Episode 5 as one of the few other 'names'. Sara Gregory found some success in the 1951-1953 stage musical Zip Goes A Million, initially alongside George Formby but he was quickly replaced by comedian Reg Dixon after heart troubles.

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Pinwright's Progress was given a budget of £400 per episode by the BBC, over £17,000 by today's standards with inflation since 1946. Of course in 1946 there was no recording television in advance, they were performed as live broadcast on the day. The cast and crew spent 4 days rehearsing at St Hilda's studios in Maida Vale and had a final run-through at lunchtime on the first episode broadcast day of 29th November 1946 before the actual live performance from 20:30 that evening from Alexandra Palace.

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The broadcast of Pinwright's Progress was fortnightly, alternating every other week with the popular magazine programme Kaleidoscope which had begun the week before, 22nd November 1946, and would run on until 1953, giving Tony Hancock his first television exposure in 1951.

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As well as being the first TV sitcom Pinwright's Progress performed another TV first; for Episode 5 of 6 of the first series, producer Glyn-Jones decided to trial having a live studio audience for what he called in a letter "hired laughter". No studio-made British television show had had a live audience prior. Radio did over at the roomy Paris radio studio, as did TV recorded live from theatres but the Ally Pally television studio was too small. Given that Studio B was a room about the size of a tennis court which had 2 sets for the sitcom, a track for the two large cameras to pan across, a 12-piece orchestra for the live music and comic songs plus the necessary camera, sound and production staff there was only room for an audience of 6 people, mostly free actors who were available. But it was a first and it set the standard for most sitcoms to follow being filmed before a live audience until this century's trend for single camera filmed comedy.

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The critical response to the first episode of Pinwright's Progress was mostly positive with the only real criticisms being around the limitations of early TV production; slow scene changes slowing the pace etc that couldn't be helped and were typical across all TV production at this time compared to slicker radio. Naturally, in those days with TV only back on for 5 months following the war and until Queen Elizabeth's Coronation saw television set sales soar very few people in the UK actually had a television set to watch the show at the time! So it was seen by a tiny amount of mostly Londoners and Home Counties set owners. (There were only around 15,000 television sets in 1947 which blew up to 1.4 million households in 1952). But the response was positive enough that after the performance of the second of the six commissioned shows which was also successful the BBC commissioned a second series of 6 episodes. Unfortunately only 4 of that planned 6 episode second series would eventually be performed due to a post-war fuel shortage that ground production to a halt and it was not picked up again when that fuel shortage ended as everyone had moved on to other things, bringing to a close the worlds' first television sitcom after the tenth episode (Series 2 Episode 4) on 16th May 1947.

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The series ran on the BBC's then sole television service as follows (only the first 3 episodes are given plot synopsis in the Radio Times and I also have a record of the plot of the very last episode, the rest only get a title with no further details in the RT so the other plots are lost to time, conversely the first 3 episodes given plots aren't given titles in the RT!);

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Series 1

1.1 Episode 1 - 29/11/1946*

J. Pinwright is the proprietor of the smallest multiple store in the world. He has a pretty daughter and a hated rival, and his difficulties are increased by his staff's efforts to be helpful.

Further to this RT synopsis from BBC Written Archives it seems the final set-piece for this episode was an elaborate visual gag involving a flying hat not dissimilar to the helicopter blade hat Captain Peacock is forced to wear in an episode of AYBS? Only this one makes the wearing actually take off at the end thanks to Joseph Kirby of Kirby's Flying Ballets, a stage effects company who specialised in making actors fly around stages on wires in such productions as Peter Pan. Pinwright tries to keep up with the upmarket MacGillygally’s by opening a combined hat and model plane department, sending a shopper flying into the rafters wearing headgear with a propeller attached to it.

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1.2 Episode 2 - 13/12/1946*

Christmas is coming and so, not to be beaten by his hated rival, the owner of MacGillygally's Stores, Mr. Pinwright prepares his Christmas Bazaar. There is trouble though, partly occasioned by the sudden appearance of three robed and bearded Father Christmases – one of whom is a fugitive from the law. Mrs. Sigsbee, however, lends tone to the proceedings by appearing in costume as the Fairy Queen, and all ends well – or does it?

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1.3 Episode 3 - 27/12/1946*

Mr. Pinwright intends to lure post-Christmas shoppers by a handsome gift to the store's fiftieth customer – cigars or nylons, cash customers only considered. In addition, he opens a brand new snack bar, but some pills palmed off on him by that cunning salesman throw all his plans into confusion.

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1.4 Cash Crisis - 10/01/1947*

1.5 Fashions and Pashuns - 24/01/1947*

1.6 Strained Relations - 07/02/1947*

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Series 2

2.1 The Gypsy's Warning - 21/02/1947*

2.2 Gone To Seed - 21/03/1947*

No synopsis but by the title I would guess this is the one where they open a gardening department?

2.3 Radio Activity - 02/05/1947*

Likewise unconfirmed but I would presume by the title this is the episode where they open a radio department?

2.4 Staggered Holidays - 16/05/1947*

No synopsis in the Radio Times but from BBC Written Archives records the last episode ended with Pinwright marched off to prison when he boasted to a customer about how lax he was with rationing coupons and tax arrangements, only to find the customer was actually the tax inspector! Seems like a fitting end to go out on, even though had production not been halted it wouldn't have been the last episode and he'd have been back out again a fortnight later for Episode 5.

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* Sadly nothing survives of Pinwright's Progress in the archives. Not so much later wiped from archives like 50s-70s BBC series as never recorded in the first place! As stated above the shows were performed live with no recording capability. Any time back then a dhiw wascrepeated it was repeated by reperforming the whole thing live again, with entirely new fluffs and errors. Not long after this sitcom ended the BBC started a process of telerecording which involved pointing a film camera at a television monitor to record programmes but this was first done on the show Variety in Sepia broadcast 7th October 1947, 5 months after Pinwright's Progress ended so the show never had the opportunity to survive. And to be fair very little was telerecorded in those early days anyway and most of what was done was subsequently lost as there are very few early telerecordings still in the archives so even had the process been around and the series selected for it they'd likely not have been kept long term in any case. A brief excerpt of one song survives from that first telerecording of Variety in Sepia and very little after it until the 50s. Pinwright's Progress truly is a very little seen sitcom! A great shame as its parallels to the later AYBS? make it one I'd be intrigued to see even if it was probably very basic given its age. I won't ask if anyone here has any memories of this one airing in 1947...

When it came to an end producer Glyn-Jones returned to acting with the BBC Drama Repertory Company, Ted Kavanagh went back to writing his hit radio show I.T.M.A., but sitcom writer Rodney Hobson, a former Major in the Royal Artillery, had less success. Whilst writing this he also got to write a segment in the alternate weeks' magazine television series Kaleidoscope for 6 episodes in their Word Play segment but afterwards had no other success in the medium. He tried pitching a few ideas for other television shows to the BBC for a while but they weren't interested in any of them and he has no other television credits. Ted Kavanagh saw him OK for a few years with radio work, co-writing a few radio shows together through 1948 and 1949 including a radio spin-off for I.TM.A.'s Lind Joyce called They're Out but I.T.M.A. ended in 1949 on the sudden death of Handley after which Kavanagh largely retired.

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