All Gas and Gaiters is a British television ecclesiastical sitcom which aired on BBC1 from 1966 to 1971. It was written by Pauline Devaney and Edwin Apps, a husband-and-wife team who used the pseudonym of "John Wraith" when writing the pilot. All Gas and Gaiters was also broadcast on BBC Radio from 1971 to 1972.
John Barron – Very Revd Lionel Pugh-Critchley, Dean of St Ogg's
Ernest Clark – Very Revd Lionel Pugh-Critchley, Dean of St Ogg's
Joan Sanderson – Mrs Grace Pugh-Critchley, the Dean's wife
Ruth Kettlewell – Mrs Grace Pugh-Critchley, the Dean's wife
Plot
All Gas and Gaiters, predominantly farcical in nature, was set in the close of the fictional St Oggs Cathedral and concerned various intrigues and rivalries among the clergy in the Church of England. The bishop was easygoing; his friend the archdeacon was elderly, tippling, and still appreciative of attractive women; and the bishop's chaplain was naïve and accident-prone. Their wish to live a quiet bachelor life was continually threatened by the overbearing dean, who tried to bring by-the-book rule to the cathedral. The title is a pun, deriving from a comic expression uttered by an eccentric character in Charles Dickens' 1839 novel Nicholas Nickleby, and later used by such writers as P. G. Wodehouse, Agatha Christie, and Powell and Pressburger. The phrase "all gas and gaiters" has had different meanings. Sometimes it has been used to mean "a satisfactory state of affairs" and sometimes it has had the meaning of "nonsense". The relevance of this phrase to Anglican clergy is that gaiters were part of the traditional dress of bishops and archdeacons. The series initially aroused some controversy because of its portrayal of senior clergy as bungling incompetents, although some clergy enjoyed it. In the opening credits, St Albans Cathedral was shown as the fictional St Oggs, but with the twisted spire of Church of St Mary and All Saints, Chesterfield added to the central tower. The background to the opening credits was the headmaster's garden of St. Albans School. The name "St. Oggs" may have been taken from a fictional village in George Eliot's novel The Mill on the Floss. It proved to be the first of a series of comedies starring Derek Nimmo in similar bumbling clerical roles——but is regarded as the best, partly because of a strong supporting cast and partly because it included some elements of gentle satire. All 11 surviving episodes were released on DVD by DD Home Entertainment in 2004, originally accompanied by a detailed behind-the-scenes booklet, written by Andy Priestner in consultation with the show's writers, Edwin Apps and Pauline Devaney, but later released without. Cinema Club have since bought the DVD rights. Eight scripts of the lost episodes were published in 2015: All Gas and Gaiters, the Lost Episodes: Tome 1 : "Only Three Can Play", "The Dean Goes Primitive", "The Bishop Goes To Town", "The Bishop Learns the Facts", "The Bishop is Hospitable", "The Bishop Takes a Holiday", "The Affair at Cookham Lock" and "The Bishop Gives a Shove".
Episodes
The pilot and first three series were videotaped in black-and-white. The third series was taped in colour, but originally broadcast in monochrome. The fourth and fifth series were made and shown in colour. Only 11 episodes still exist in the archive, owing to the wiping policy of the BBC in this era. Two of the colour episodes from series 5 are preserved as black and white16mm film recordings only. Only six colour episodes are preserved in their original colour videotape format.
Pilot: 1966
Series 1: 1967
Series 2: 1967
Series 3: 1969
Series 4: 1970
Series 5: 1971
Surviving episodes
''Christmas Night with the Stars''
Christmas Night with the Stars was a programme screened annually on Christmas night, when the top stars of the BBC appeared in short versions of their programmes, typically five to ten minutes long. All Gas and Gaiters appeared once alongside its sitcom spin-off Oh, Brother! in 1968. This telerecording no longer exists in the BBC's film and videotape archives.
Christmas Special: 1968
Radio
A radio version of All Gas and Gaiters was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 from 5 January 1971 to 4 December 1972 for 33 episodes. The radio show used the same cast as the television series with the exception of Derek Nimmo, who left after the first series and was succeeded by Jonathan Cecil. Although seven radio episodes were thought to have been wiped, these were later found and all are available through radio enthusiasts. Some episodes were rebroadcast on BBC 7 in October and November 2006, and again a year later and in early 2009. They continued to be broadcast on the station, now renamed BBC Radio 4 Extra, in August 2011 and again in early 2017.
