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 future comedy partner Ronnie Corbett, whom he had met in 1963 when Corbett was the barman at the Buckstone Club near the Haymarket Theatre, and the two became friends. Corbett stated in his autobiography that the two had gravitated towards each other because of their similar backgrounds; neither had attended university, while many of the other "Frost Report" cast and writers had. Each episode of the show, which was performed and broadcast live, was focused on a single topic and principally revolved around a continuous monologue from Frost, with sketches from Barker, Corbett and Cleese as the show went on.