Just Good Friends

1 9 8 3 – 1 9 8 6 (UK)
22 x 30 minute episodes

In the summer of 1976 Penny Warrender and Vince Pinner meet at a Rolling Stones concert in Hyde Park, London.

After a stormy two-year courtship they finally plan to get married but, just two days before the event, Vince gets a severe case of cold feet, hops on his motorbike and rides off into the sunset, leaving Penny broken-hearted.

Five years later they meet again, by chance, and Penny (to her horror) finds that the old attraction is still there.

Although they insist on remaining ‘just good friends’ the old feelings quickly resurface and for the run of the series they conduct a love-hate, on-again-and-off-again affair.

Neither is helped in this venture by their respective parents, Penny’s snobbish mother and unemployed father, and Vince’s embarrassingly raucous scrap-dealing mum and dad.

Paul Nicholas and Jan Francis played the lovers stretching the “Will they, won’t they” theme stretched over three series before finally tying the knot.

Writer John Sullivan intended to end the series with the 1984 Christmas special, in which Penny split with Vince for what she said was the final time and flew off to Paris, leaving Vince with the half-intended pact that they should meet again on the Eiffel Tower three years later.

But viewers like a happy ending and two years later Sullivan brought the couple back for one final shot where we met a different Penny – gone were the pangs of self-doubt, the young woman going nowhere, having been replaced by a successful career woman working in Paris.

Only one aspect of her old character remained – the incurable, destructive yet indestructible attraction to Vince. So they satisfied their public and married at last, destined to always be more than ‘just good friends’.

Vince Pinner 
Paul Nicholas
Penny Warrender 
Jan Francis
Daphne Warrender 
Sylvia Kay
Norman Warrender 
John Ringham
Rita Pinner 
Ann Lynn
Les Pinner 
Shaun Curry
Clifford Pinner 
Adam French