Humphrey Barclay became Head of Comedy at LWT in 1977 and supervised various successful series including "No, Honestly", "A Fine Romance" (1981–84). In May 1980 he unveiled "Metal Mickey" as a show "with the appeal of "Star Wars", the Daleks and "Mork and Mindy"" Following criticism at the Edinburgh International Television Festival of what was seen as casual racism the LWT series "Mind Your Language" (1977–79; 1986), Barclay commissioned "No Problem!", transmitted by Channel 4 during 1983–85, the first original black-made sitcom for British TV (an earlier series featuring a black family, "The Fosters" (ITV, 1976–77), had been a remake of a
British sitcom world's longest running sitcom. The commercial station ITV had popular successes with "Rising Damp" (1974–78, sometimes called the best of all ITV sitcoms), "Man About the House" (1973–76) and "George and Mildred" (1976–79). "Rising Damp"'s star, Leonard Rossiter, also played the lead role in the BBC's highly popular "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin" (1976–79). The decline in cinema attendance in this period meant that many of these series were turned into cinema films; the first film version of "On the Buses" (1969–73) was the biggest hit at the British box office in 1971. According to Jeff Evans, "On