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 Cleese and June Whitfield. The first New Year special, "The Man who Nearly Knew Pavarotti", was commissioned in 1994. The hour-long show was broadcast on 1 January 1995 and featured Norman Wisdom as a piano player who had lost the confidence to play. A second New Year programme was produced and broadcast in 2000 to celebrate the new millennium. It featured the second guest appearance by Keith Clifford and a guest appearance by Dora Bryan. Titled "Last Post and Pigeon", the show ran for sixty minutes and dealt with the trio's pilgrimage to visit World War II graves in France.