Last of the Summer Wine enjoyed the show. The programme was nominated for numerous awards and won the National Television Award for Most Popular Comedy Programme in 1999. There were twenty-one Christmas specials, three television films and a documentary film about the series. "Last of the Summer Wine" inspired other adaptations, including a television prequel, several novelisations, and stage adaptations. In 1972, Duncan Wood, the BBC's Head of Comedy, watched a comedy on television called "The Misfit". Impressed by writer Roy Clarke's ability to inject both comedy and drama into the sitcom, Wood offered Clarke the opportunity to write a sitcom. Clarke nearly turned the
Last of the Summer Wine especially for Sallis, who liked the character and agreed to play him. He was soon joined by an actor he had previously worked with, Michael Bates as Cyril Blamire. James Gilbert wanted Bates as Blamire because of his reputation as a comedy actor, and Bates loved the role. Compo Simmonite was the last role to be cast in the original trio. Gilbert had seen film actor Bill Owen playing northern characters in the Royal Court Theatre and proposed to cast him as Compo. Clarke, who initially saw Owen as an archetypal cockney who could not play as solid a northern