Mother's Ruin starred Roy Barraclough and Dora Bryan and ran for one series of 6 episodes in May, June and July 1994.

 

Made by Granada for ITV, in Mother's Ruin Roy Barraclough (then 59) plays 50 year old bachelor Leslie Howard Flintcroft, tied down into running his mothers' health food and supplies shop called Nurse Nature. His mother, 70 year old former stage actress Kitty Flintcroft (Dora Bryan, who was only 11 years older than Roy) keeps her son on a tight leash. She blames her failing health and failed stage career on her son simply for being born, hence the title Mother's Ruin, which she accuses him of being. His father left Kitty when son Leslie was 2 for a younger woman 47 years ago and has since died. She has interfered in any attempt Leslie has had to have any real relationships or outside life. For the last ten years he's been in a going nowhere relationship with divorcee Wendy Watson (Kay Adshead), who has a dopey hypercondriac  teenage son Clive (Jason Done) who thinks he has bandy legs, early onset baldness and any other number of failings that will put girls off him. Leslie's relationship with Wendy involves meeting up once a week but he is sexually frustrated as she won't put out before marriage and mother won't let him marry her as she thinks her unsuitable. Instead mother wants him to marry their plain unappealing and frustrated shop assistant Brucella Pashley (Julia Deakin) simply because she has a rich millionaire uncle in Australia called Bruce whom she was named after in hopes of eventually inheriting his fortune, which is why mother finds her a suitable match. 

 

Both Leslie and mother Kitty are perfectly happy to con their customers into buying expensive worthless herbal remedies and potions using any and all tactics to get a sale, but generally Kitty is upstairs in her flat above the shop, recalling memories of her days on the stage and the famous names she worked with like Googie Withers.

 

In some respects it plays like a knock-off of Open All Hours, with Leslie in the Granville role and Kitty in the Arkwright role, frustrating attempts at breaking free for their underpaid under-appreciated shop labour and their attempts at getting money from punters by any means necessary. But obviously Mother's Ruin isn't in the same class as Open All Hours. In fact Mother's Ruin made very little impact at all on the public consciousness. But IMO it's a fairly decent little sitcom, very dated in style for 1994 but it's not without its laughs, which places it above a fair few other forgotten sitcoms rightly slipping under the radar. Had it been made in the 70s which feels like its natural home it likely would have gone on a couple or more series but by 1994 it's all a bit old hat, something made for the Last of the Summer Wine generation which is probably why I enjoyed it with my love of old school comedy but up against Men Behaving Badly or Absolutely Fabulous, both running since 1992, this would have appeared somewhat quaint and twee. This was intentional to suit Roy's comedy tastes. He said himself in newspaper interviews at the time that it was the sort of traditional sitcom you'd more frequently see at least a decade earlier and going back through the Carry Ons to his favourite comics like Robb Wilton and Max Miller and the sort of Blackpool summer season stage comedies he enjoyed. Inuendo-laden stereotypically British sexually repressed stuff. 

 

This was Dora Bryan's first starring sitcom since Both Ends Meet/Dora in 1972. She'd continued successfully on the stage but television never seemed to know what to do with her. Eventually she joined the regular cast of Last of the Summer Wine as the sister of Thora Hird's character.

 

The series was written by John Stevenson,  who wrote a number of sitcoms you'll eventually find in this Forgotten Sitcoms strand from 1968 Ken Jones sitcom Her Majesties Pleasure, to 1971 Ken Jones & Arthur Lowe sitcom The Last of the Baskets, to 1974 Michael Robbins and Arthur English sitcom How's Your Father. Following the lack of success with Mother's Ruin in 1994 he'd go on to write 3 episodes of sitcom Oh Dr Beeching which also starred Julia Deakin who went from the dowdy Brucella here to the glamorous May Skinner there, married to Paul Shane's Jack Skinner. Coincidentally, Paul Shane guest stars in an episode of Mother's Ruin too, inbetween You Rang, M'Lord and Oh, Dr Beeching. 

 

But comedy aside, Stevenson was also one of the regular contributing writers to Coronation Street for 30 years from 1976 till 2006, contributing to over 447 episodes, including the popular Alec Gilroy - Bet Lynch years of 1986-1992. This is why this Granada sitcom came about. Roy Barraclough had quit Coronation Street in 1992 when Alec Gilroy was one of the most popular characters on the soap, according to him because he was worried about typecasting and being better known as Alec Gilroy than Roy Barraclough. But there were also rumours that he had a tense working relationship with co-star Julie Goodyear (Bet) and the two supposedly didn't get on at all which isn't great if you're working closely together all that time on a busy soap schedule. But Coronation Street makers Granada wanted to keep Roy sweet in hopes of at least potentially wooing him back to playing Alec some day (he did return 1995-1998) and so they specifically crafted this sitcom for Roy with Street writer Stevenson in secret before presenting him with the finished scripts.

 

Roy was very nervous about doing this as he hadn't starred in a sitcom before and he felt the pressure as lead. He had obviously worked with Les Dawson in the Cissie & Ada sketches, and Les had been planning a sitcom pilot for Cissie & Ada in 1993 when Dawson suddenly died, killing that comedy project off. 

 

Initially, despite being their idea, Granada didn't seem to have much faith in it. They were worried the humour would mostly appeal to a Northern audience and not find favour down south so rather than give it a good slot they scheduled it for Sunday afternoons from late March, daytime television being the home of the older audience they thought might appreciate it more but they held a private screening of an episode in London to gauge interest and the reception seemed positive enough that they reconsidered, still scheduling it for Sundays but in a more sitcom friendly slot of 7pm from the end of May. On the strength of the feedback they also gave the go-ahead for a second series. One can only assume they managed to find an appreciative audience for a freebie, or the London audience were the older demographic that might be more partial to it as once it went out it got rather mixed and more negative reviews than positive. The go-ahead for the second series must have been rescinded as it never materialised! 

 

Filmed in Manchester at the end of 1993, the inside of the Nurse Nature health shop was modelled on Bernard Moseley's Southport Health Shop, which they recreated in the Granada studio whilst Keith Pollitt of Cedar Health in Hazel Grove provided health supplies such as herbal cough remedies to help authentically stock the shelves of the fictional shop. Keith got to attend the recording of the last episode as a thanks. 

 

The series ran on ITV as follows (without episode titles);...

 

1.1 Episode 1 - 29/05/1994

Leslie wants to change the name of the health food shop from Nurse Nature as the dirty mac brigade keep phoning up or popping in to book massages because the name Nurse Nature suggests sexy and nude. Kitty is well aware of this but refuses to change the name as anything that brings in customers is OK by her. Leslie also wants to marry Wendy so he can finally get some sex but Kitty thinks she's unsuitable as a divorcee and tries to set him up with their dowdy shop assistant Brucella because she has an inheritance to come. 

 

1.2 Episode 2 - 05/06/1994

It's Leslie's 50th birthday and Wendy's son Clive is off to a Scout meeting so Leslie hopes to finally persuade Wendy to give him some action. Kitty invites Wendy to her son's birthday party for the first time but only hopes to put her off Leslie. Young Clive's latest obsession is the idea he has bandy legs and Kitty plays on this to annoy Wendy. Clive takes a tub of pills from the health shop to top himself but he's only taken a tub of laxatives.

 

1.3 Episode 3 - 12/06/1994

Wendy has dumped Leslie over the laxative incident. When sexy buxom Sandra Potts comes into the shop for a hangover cure for her father, bookmaker Ernie Potts, Leslie is so flummoxed he lets her leave without paying. Going to the bookies for the money he finds the uncouth Ernie Potts and his minder want him for a £345 betting debt that Leslie knows nothing about. It seems mother Kitty has been placing bets and running up debts in her son's name and now Ernie wants paying or Leslie's legs will be broken.

Guest stars Paul Shane as Ernie Potts. 

 

1.4 Episode 4 - 19/06/1994

Leslie finally puts his foot down with mother about marrying Wendy and he leaves home. Kitty tells him he won't inherit the business as he'd always been told he would when she dies. Instead she threatens to sell it to fund her care home stay, leaving him without a livelihood. The prospect of marrying an unemployed Leslie with no prospects doesn't exactly thrill Wendy either. Leslie has to reluctantly return home unmarried.

 

1.5 Episode 5 - 26/06/1994

Ambrose Barrington, veteran actor-manager and living legend in his own mind, turns up on Kitty's doorstep. Kitty used to be in his touring troupe before Leslie was born when they were also an item. Kitty believes her true love has returned to her for love but he's down on his luck and hoping to use businesswoman Kitty to fund a new touring play he's written and wants to mount starring he and Kitty. But Ambrose does a runner to one of his other former actresses who now runs a pub when Kitty brings up marriage. 

Guest stars Freddie Jones as Ambrose Barrington. 

 

1.6 Episode 6 - 10/07/1994

Wendy wants Leslie to give her teenage son Clive a man-to-man talk on the facts of life and the benefits of abstinence after he was caught with a girl. Leslie's honest sound advice to him is just to run as far as possible from his mother before he ends up dominated, frustrated and alone like him. Wendy, who was listening on the other side of the door, bursts in and angrily dumps Leslie. With no other female company on the horizon Leslie asks Brucella to set him up on a blind date with the raver friend she keeps talking about and he goes to the pub to meet her. But he only meets Brucella, who made up the friend as a more exciting alter ego, the person she wants to be but isn't.

 

For some reason the last episode was delayed a week. It should have aired on 3rd July but was held over till 10th July.

 

All episodes survive in the archives but it hasn't been released commercially on VHS or DVD. It hasn't had a terrestrial TV repeat either but in May 2022, 28 years after first broadcast, all 6 episodes were repeated on Forces TV. Copies of these repeats are currently on YouTube for you to watch.

 

For this one I not only have a handful of original press publicity photos but also the Granada press publicity pack folder they came in which is nice, from a newspapers archive.