The Liver Birds "Man is the dog, and woman is the bone. He eats the best of you, and buries the rest of you, and when his dish is empty—he'll dig you up again." This would be the last series with Beryl; as Polly James explained: "The reason I left the programme in the end was that I felt I was in danger of caricaturing what was already a pretty outrageous character." Producer Sydney Lotterby had to find a new leading actress to keep the series going after Polly James' departure. In 1971 he'd replaced Pauline Collins with Nerys Hughes, and Hughes herself
The Liver Birds Sykes and Sheila Hancock, and on "The Likely Lads". Carla Lane wrote most of the episodes, Taylor co-writing only the first two series. The pilot was shown on 14th April 1969 as an episode of "Comedy Playhouse", the BBC's breeding ground for sitcoms at the time. The series charted the ups and downs of two "dolly birds" sharing a flat on Liverpool's Huskisson Street, concentrating on the two young single women's dealings with boyfriends, work, parents and each other. Dressed in the best 1970s fashions, they looked for romance in a loose female equivalent of "The Likely Lads". The pilot