This short-lived sequel to Porridge followed Fletch (Ronnie Barker) and Godber (Richard Beckinsale) after they have been released on parole from HMP Slade.
For three years, eight months, Norman Stanley Fletcher had been looking forward to the day. He’d dreamed of sleeping between clean sheets, of a shirt that didn’t itch, and shaving in hot water. No eyes at keyholes, no shuffling lines and no head counts. No more porridge.
But as he boards the train to London on his journey home to Muswell Hill, he discovers the freedom he is about to taste is very different from what he left behind. For a start, the dole queue he will now have to join has over a million people on it.
And so Fletch finds himself in a changed world, away from all his old mates. But one old mate is still around.
His former cellmate Godber – who had left HMP Slade some time previously – is seeing quite a lot of Fletcher’s daughter, Ingrid (Patricia Brake). A young Nicholas Lyndhurst co-starred as Fletch’s adynamic but academically gifted son, Raymond.
Scripts were by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais once more. The series won the 1978 BAFTA for Best Situation Comedy Series – beating The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, Rising Damp, and Two’s Company – with Ronnie Barker also picking up the Best Light Entertainment Performance award.
Richard Beckinsale died suddenly of a massive heart attack at his Berkshire home on 19 March 1979, aged just 31. Ronnie Barker died of heart failure at the Katherine House Hospice in Adderbury, Oxfordshire, on 3 October 2005, aged 76.
Norman Stanley Fletcher Ronnie Barker
Lennie Godber
Richard Beckinsale
Ingrid Fletcher
Patricia Brake
Raymond Fletcher
Nicholas Lyndhurst
Mr Mackay
Fulton Mackay
Mr McEwan
David Swift
Penny
Roberta Tovey
Dante
Freddie Earlle
Perce
Ronald Pember
Arthur
Dave Hill
Mrs Chapman
Rowena Cooper
Mrs Appleby
Lally Bowers
Pamela
Elizabeth Cassidy
Alfie
Eric Francis
Giles
David Morley
Crowther
Peter Postlethwaite
Episodes
Going Home | Going To Be Alright | Going Sour | Going To Work | Going Going Gone | Going Off The Rails
But as he boards the train to London on his journey home to Muswell Hill, he discovers the freedom he is about to taste is very different from what he left behind. For a start, the dole queue he will now have to join has over a million people on it.
