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 aired posthumously in December. Barker became a comic actor in his theatre days, noting "I think it's better to make people laugh than cry." He has been described by "The Times" as "not a comedian, [but] an actor with a talent for comedy," who "slipped into characters with apparent ease." Barker felt he was funny only in character. The BBC wrote of him: "Able to deliver the great tongue-twisting speeches required of his characters, Barker pronounced himself 'completely boring' without a script." Peter Hall spoke of Barker's skills as a dramatic actor, calling him "the great actor we lost" and