Richard Beckinsale spawned a film version. Soon after, he appeared in two of British TV's most successful sitcoms at the same time. On ITV, he was playing naive medical student Alan Moore in "Rising Damp" (voted ITV's best-ever sitcom in the "Britain's Best Sitcom" poll in 2004) while also starring alongside Ronnie Barker in the BBC sitcom "Porridge" as prison inmate Lennie Godber. He also appeared in the films "Rentadick" (1972) and "Three for All" (1975) and made appearances in several other television series such as the "ITV Playhouse" episode "Last Summer" in 1976. Shortly after his 30th birthday, Beckinsale was the
Alan Moore of wiping out what had gone before, giving the hero amnesia and revealing that everything we'd learned to that point was a lie." In this manner he was largely able to start afresh with the character and their series and was not constrained by earlier canon. While commenting on the artistic restrictiveness of serialised comic books, artist Joe Rubinstein gave the example that a comics creator would be limited in what he could do with Spider-Man, and added, "unless you're Alan Moore, who would probably kill him and bring him back as a real spider or something". As a comics