Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width

Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width
Genre Sitcom
Created by Vince Powell
Harry Driver
Starring John Bluthal
Joe Lynch
Bernard Spear
Cyril Shaps
Eamon Kelly
Country of origin UK
No. of series 6 (+ pilot)
No. of episodes 41 (including mini Christmas special)
Production
Producer(s) Leonard White
Ronnie Baxter
Stuart Allen
Alan Tarrant
Running time 30 minutes
Release
Original network ABC Television
(pilot + series 1–2)
Thames Television
(series 3–6)
ITV
Original release 18 February 1967 (1967-02-18) – 14 September 1971 (1971-09-14)

Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width is a British television sitcom first broadcast in 1967 as a single play in the Armchair Theatre anthology series, later becoming a series of half-hour episodes, which ran until 1971. A total of 40 episodes were made, all but one of them being believed to have aired.

It was originally made by ABC Television for the ITV network, with its production being continued by Thames Television.

Plot

The plots revolved around two tailors in business together. Manny Cohen, played by John Bluthal, was a Jew, and Patrick Kelly, played by Joe Lynch, was a Roman Catholic. Above their shop worked Lewtas (Bernard Spear) who was also a Jew and imported cloth. Two further prominent characters were Rabbi Levy (Christopher Benjamin in the pilot (he later reappeared as Dr Shapiro in a later episode), Cyril Shaps in series 1 to 4, David Nettheim and Jonathan Burn as Rabbi Stone in series 5) from the local synagogue, and Father Ryan (Denis Carey in the pilot, Eamon Kelly in series 1 to 4) from the local Catholic church. The Romanian-born Meier Tzelniker also made several appearances as Israel Bloom.

One episode featured Manny and Patrick trading the rights to display their pictures around the shop. When Patrick had two pictures of the Pope on the wall while Manny had one of Moshe Dayan, Manny's comment was "It's the going rate. Two Popes to one Moshe."

Another episode had Patrick, a singer, filling in at the synagogue for a sick cantor, on the occasion of a visit by the Chief Rabbi. Coached to sing phonetically in Hebrew, Patrick performs, every moment milked for comedic value. Finally the Chief Rabbi congratulates Patrick but reveals he knows something is up. When asked how he knows, he replies, "Simple. At the end of the service you genuflected and crossed yourself!" The episode title was "The Not-So-Kosher Cantor".

Notable guest artistes included film actors Dennis Price as a Savile Row tailor and Rupert Davies as a Roman Catholic Bishop, Fred Emney, Harold Bennett, David Kossoff (playing himself), Jack Smethurst, Dad's Army stars Frank Williams (playing another clergyman) and Bill Pertwee, comedian Dick Bentley, Roy Marsden, Victor Maddern, future Coronation Street stars Barbara Knox (as Barbara Mullaney) and Roy Barraclough, George A. Cooper, Rita Webb, On the Buses star Michael Robbins, and Ellen Pollock as Manny's mother Ruby.

Film adaptation

In 1973 Bluthal and Lynch reprised their roles in a film spin off.

Episodes

Episodes marked with an * are, according to Kaleidoscope Publishing, currently missing from the archives.

Pilot (1967)

Series One (1967)

Series Two (1968)

Christmas Special (1968)

Series Three (1969)

Christmas Special (1969)

Series Four (1970)

Series Five (1970–71)

Series Six (1971)

Trivia

The pilot and the first two series were produced by ABC; however, the second series (of 6 episodes) did not air until just after Thames launched, who initially aired the six series 2 episodes over August and September 1968.

Archival status

Out of the 40 episodes which were made, 11 episodes no longer exist. These are the pilot, five of the six episodes from Series 1, and five of the six episodes from Series 2.

DVD release

A 4-Disc set of the show, containing the Thames TV series was released on DVD in June 2010, by Network.

See also

References

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