First of the Summer Wine original series making an appearance in the prequel. With the success of "Last of the Summer Wine", the BBC approved a new series which Roy Clarke would carry over characters of the original show. With the new series, Clarke hoped to show the lives of his characters as they were in the "first summer" of their lives, as opposed to the last summer depicted in "Last of the Summer Wine". While there would still be the "shadow of the Grim Reaper" hanging over them, this time it would be because of World War II, not due to their old age.
Last of the Summer Wine Emerick appealed for funding through crowd-sourcing sites in the hopes of gaining enough support to produce a feature film featuring the duo or even a television series. Associate Producer Terry Bartlam believed there was enough of a scope with Cooper and Walsh that they could carry their own series and that this spin-off could be the answer to those who believed "Last of the Summer Wine" should have been given a proper ending. A live production of "Last of the Summer Wine", known informally as the "summer season", was produced in Bournemouth in 1984. While Bill Owen and Peter Sallis