'Seven Of One' is best remembered as the series that gave Ronnie Barker two of his greatest television successes: 'Porridge' and 'Open All Hours'. But don't be fooled into thinking the remaining five are in some way substandard. 'My Old Man' cast Ronnie as 'Sam Cobbett', a cantankerous pensioner struggling to fit in with the modern world ( it later became an I.T.V. series starring the wonderful Clive Dunn ), 'Another Man's Meat' featured a sublime teaming of Ronnie, Prunella Scales, Sam Kelly and Joan Sims in this slight but amusing tale of an overweight man whose attempts to diet are taken to extremes, 'Spanner's Eleven' was a Roy Clarke script about a struggling football team, 'Another Fine Mess' a sublime evocation of the Laurel & Hardy movies ( almost as good as the real thing, in fact ) and, my favourite, 'I'll Fly You For A Quid' was about a gambling-mad Welsh family. One wishes they all could have been developed into series. A must for all Ronnie Barker fans. Pity that the D.V.D. release lacks the standard title sequence on two of the five episodes, though.
