Watching


Watching is a British television sitcom, produced by Granada Television for the ITV network and broadcast for seven series and four Christmas specials between 1987 and 1993.
The series was written by Jim Hitchmough and starred Paul Bown and Emma Wray as mismatched couple Malcolm Stoneway and Brenda Wilson.

Plot

Watching was set in Merseyside, with Brenda from Liverpool and Malcolm from Meols on the Wirral, the "posh" part of Merseyside on the other side of the River Mersey. The title refers to Brenda and her sister Pamela's hobby of "people watching", and to Malcolm's hobby of birdwatching, which initially Brenda endures rather than enjoys, but later comes to appreciate. Also, similarly to the series title, many of the episode titles are verbs that end in ‘-ing’.
Quiet biker Malcolm, who lived with his domineering mother, was accompanied on his birdwatching trips by loud scouser Brenda, who was forced to ride in the sidecar of his Norton motorbike and had a habit of rubbing his mother up the wrong way. Other key characters in the series were Brenda's sister Pamela, her husband David and Brenda and Pam's mother Joyce in the last few series. The series followed Malcolm and Brenda's on/off relationship, during which Malcolm married another woman called Lucinda. However, Brenda and Malcolm finally married each other in the final episode, "Knotting", which was broadcast on 4 April 1993.
The series ran for 56 30-minute episodes over 7 series, including the two 60-minute special extended episodes.

Episode List

Series One

Series Two

Series Three

Series Four

Series Five

Series Six

Series Seven

Cast

Note: "Cedric" and "Mary" are the names given to the characters by Brenda during her people-watching days, Cedric's "real" name is unknown, but in series one episode "Repenting" Brenda reveals that she has talked to her and that "Mary"'s real name is Freda.

Production notes

Watching was originally conceived as a comedy sketch about a shy birdwatcher and a lively girl, written by Hitchmough during a drama workshop at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool. He submitted the sketch for the BBC satirical series Not the Nine O'Clock News but it was rejected.
Undeterred by this, Hitchmough developed the sketch into a hit stage play and later won a commission from Granada Television to produce a seven-part series for broadcast on Sunday nights at 10pm - a timeslot which was usually reserved for satirical comedy such as Yorkshire Television's The New Statesman and Central's Spitting Image.
After a successful first series and subsequent Christmas special, Watching was recommissioned and moved to an earlier timeslot of 8pm on Friday nights. Up until the end of the final run, the series would win audiences of over 13 million viewers.
Originally, the series was produced by David Liddiment and directed by Les Chatfield, a senior director at Granada. Chatfield directed all 56 episodes and took over producing duties from series 3 onwards. Liddiment became the series' executive producer.
Emma Wray sang both the opening and closing versions of the theme song, What Does He See in Me?, which was written by Charles Hart. Incidental music was written and composed by Richie Close.
In 1998, after a revival of the series was turned down by ITV, who felt that the series had run its course, Hitchmough pitched a revived version of the series to the BBC, spurred on by the success of Men Behaving Badly's move to BBC One after it was dropped by ITV. Initial talks were held, but the BBC decided not to pursue the proposed series; they did offer Hitchmough the option to record a Radio 4 adaption of his original series, in keeping with a number of popular sit-coms that had also been adapted into radio versions, but Hitchmough turned the offer down, feeling that he 'wanted to tell new stories with the characters, not redo old ones'.

Book and video releases

A novel based on the first series of Watching and written by Jim Hitchmough was published in 1990 by Bantam Books.
A video featuring the first two episodes, "Meeting" and "Wrestling", was released by CastleVision in August 1993.

DVD releases

All seven series and four specials have been released on DVD. The complete first series, including the 1987 Christmas special, was released on DVD in February 2006; also released was Watching: Series 1 -Selected Episodes, which comprised three first-season episodes: "Meeting", "Outing" and "Hiding". The complete second series was released in March 2008. The complete third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh series including the 1988, 1991 and 1993 Christmas and New Year specials, especially a nine-disc set of the complete series, were released in April, May, July, October and November 2009. All releases on DVD by Network.
DVDYearRelease date
The Complete Series 1198727 February 2006
The Complete Series 2198817 March 2008
The Complete Series 319896 April 2009
The Complete Series 41989-
1990		25 May 2009
The Complete Series 51990-
1991		13 July 2009
The Complete Series 619925 October 2009
The Complete Series 719939 November 2009
The Complete Series 1 to 7 Box Set1987-
1993		9 November 2009