Last of the Summer Wine (series 1) Last of the Summer Wine (series 1) Last of the Summer Wine's first series originally aired on BBC1 between 4 January 1973 and 29 December 1973. All episodes from this series were written by Roy Clarke and produced and directed by James Gilbert. The pilot episode, alternately known as "The Last of the Summer Wine" and "Of Funerals and Fish," originally premiered on the BBC's "Comedy Playhouse" on 4 January 1973 "The Last of the Summer Wine" was the first episode of that show's fourteenth series. The pilot received a positive enough reaction that the BBC ordered a full series
Television pilot as the series premiere was rejected by the network, and a new first episode, "Train Job", was shot specifically for broadcast. Sometimes, too, viewers will assign the word "pilot" to a work that represented the first appearances of characters and situations later employed by a series – even if the work was not initially intended as a pilot for the series. A good example of this is "Love and the Television Set" (later retitled "Love and the Happy Days" for syndication), an episode of "Love, American Style" that featured a version of the Cunningham family. It was in fact a