Ripe for mischief, Britain's oldest (if not wisest) adolescents have been delighting television audiences around the world since 1973, making this the longest-running sitcom in the world. Each new series soars high in the ratings as the incorrigible senior citizens uncork a barrelful of laughs with all kinds of (gray) hair-brained schemes.

The series is set in a picturesque village in the Yorkshire Dales, one of the most beautiful parts of England. If Compo, Blamire and Clegg did not live there, it would be a quiet backwater, but their comic capers ensure that there is never a dull moment.

Well into their second childhood, they fill their time with cycling, canoeing, or whatever daft idea comes into their heads. And for Compo, there's his ever-present obsession with the wrinkly-stockinged Nora Batty. Sometimes they just sit in the café, annoying the proprietors, Sid and Ivy. More often than not, they are gallivanting through the village and across the Dales, giggling with glee, falling in streams, and behaving worse than a gang of seven-year-olds bunking off school for the day.

When Blamire leaves the village to woo a widow, Corporal Foggy Dewhurst takes his place, delighting Compo and Clegg with his insane schemes. And when he departs for pastures new, along comes Seymour - a lunatic inventor whose ideas keep Compo and Clegg in stitches.

CAST
Peter Sallis (as Norman Clegg)
Bill Owen (as Compo Simmonite)
Michael Bates (as Cyril Blamire)
Brian Wilde (as Foggy Dewhurst)
Michael Aldridge (as Seymour Utterthwaite)
Frank Thornton (as Truly Truelove)
Kathy Staff (as Nora Batty)
Joe Gladwin (as Wally Batty)
John Comer (as Sid)
Jane Freeman (as Ivy)
Gordon Wharmby (as Wesley Pegden)
Thora Hird (as Edie Pegden)
Sarah Thomas (as Glenda Wilkinson)
Mike Grady (as Barry Wilkinson)
Robert Fyfe (as Howard)
Juliet Kaplan (as Pearl)

PRODUCTION INFORMATION
Written by Roy Clarke
Directed by Alan JW Bell, Sydney Lotterby, Ray Butt, Martin Shardlow
Produced by James Gilbert, Bernard Thompson, Sydney Lotterby, Alan JW Bell, Robin Nash