Open All Hours Open All Hours Open All Hours is a British television sitcom created and written by Roy Clarke for the BBC. It ran for 26 episodes in four series, which premiered in 1976, 1981, 1982 and 1985. The programme developed from a television pilot broadcast in Ronnie Barker's comedy anthology series, "Seven of One" (1973). "Open All Hours" ranked eighth in the 2004 Britain's Best Sitcom poll. A sequel, entitled "Still Open All Hours", was created in 2013. The setting is a small grocer's shop in Balby, a suburb of Doncaster in South Yorkshire. The owner, Arkwright (Ronnie Barker), is a
Ronnie Barker different character. After two series of "The Frost Report" on the BBC, totaling 26 half-hour episodes, Frost moved to ITV after helping to set up London Weekend Television. There, Frost hosted "Frost on Sunday", with Barker and Corbett following and again performing sketches on the program. Barker began writing sketches for the programme under the pseudonym Gerald Wiley. Barker and Corbett had a greater role on the show than on "The Frost Report" and Corbett felt "more aware of what [they] were doing." Barker began using the pseudonym Gerald Wiley when writing sketches because he wished the pieces to be