Last of the Summer Wine

[Ignatius_S]

...Short for compensation. He's supposed to be on some kind of sickness benefit, If I remember it right, which the name is a reference to.

Yup - and the set-up for the series initially were three unemployed, middle-aged men with nothing to do. Clegg was redundant, Blamire had retired early and Compo had avoided work.

I remember watching it in the 2000s obvs it had been on too long at that point I think the show kept the older cast active cause Burt, Frank,Peter, and Stephen all died soon after...

That's probably most true with Hird - the series kept her going and there were times (particularly at the end) where she was released from hospital for filming and she looked very frail.

Sallis's eyesight began to seriously fail, which partly explains why Clegg became a smaller role.

However, other work did keep cast members active - Kwouk is a great example  of that that. And, as Andy147 points  out, quite a few cast members passed away quite a while after the show ended. Also, we're talking about rather mature people - Kwouk and Lewis were in their eighties when they passed, Thornton was in his nineties.

Stephen Lewis had left the show due to ill health a few years before it ended, and Peter Sallis lived for another 7 years (which isn't bad considering he was 96 when he died).

Although that's quite often said about Lewis,  according to the Vine book, his departure was partly due to family illness and budget constraints.

Did compo always live in the basement? I recall him leaning out the window in the morning and chatting up Nora in one episode.

He did, but don't spend anytime thinking about it - in Bell's book he mentions how the inside of the houses of Nora and Compo don't bear relation to what was presented in the exterior shots.

[Ignatius_S]

I find it quite hypnotic. I don't watch the end credits though, maybe it would annoy me if I heard it two times per episode.

Not sure when it started, but there was stuff/final joke over the credits or just after them in quite a lot of episodes.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

Oh dear. He'll have to start again, from the beginning.

[PlanktonSideburns]

Theme tune is fucking gorgeous

[Fambo Number Mive]

On Series 20 now. A real decline in quality so far, with loads of jokes about how Truly disliked his former wife. Very few laughs so far but will keep watching.

Probably do a rewatch from Series 1 if there is another lockdown.

[Leej88]

Do not jinx it.