Quietly Flows The Wine

Not so much a programme more an annual re-union as they gather next month in West Yorkshire for the start of shooting on the 31st year of BBC's Last Of The Summer Wine, the world's longest-running sitcom.

What started out as a Comedy Playhouse `pilot' in 1973 before emerging as a series in its own right that same year seems by now to have acquired the status of an award winning national TV `treasure'.

Some of the much-loved characters (not to mention their equally-admired interpreters, like Bill Owen and Dame Thora Hird) have inevitably fallen by the wayside down the years but writer Roy Clarke's timeless geriatric universe set in a sun-dappled North Country neverland lives on.

Returning yet again this summer to pastures familiar are Peter Sallis (timid Norman `Cleggy' Clegg), Kathy Staff (the formidable Norah Batty, and Jane Freeman (cafe' proprietor Ivy) who were there at the very start.

Producer-director Alan J W Bell weighs in at 22 years. But with just seven years of the series under his belt, director of photography Pat O'Shea is a comparative novice.

New Zealand-born O'Shea had been a 25-year BBC man when he first joined the LOTSW team in the mid-90s.

Although a globe-trotting veteran of hazardous news gathering, gritty documentaries and the occasional drama, O'Shea could hardly have been fully prepared for one particular aspect of the new assignment... its mercurial meteorology.

"It can go from brilliant blue skies to snow in the space of twenty minutes without a hint of it arriving. You can find yourself caught out at the top of the hill - you're all in t-shirts at the time - and being so high up, the winds sweep it in very quickly. There are no great laughs to be had then," he says, wincing at the memory."

The schedule has to be got through [pause] whatever the weather." For a moment it seemed that Shea was about to add, with perhaps some justification, "come hell or high water."

He goes on: "The first year I was on it, I remember we were once two days into shooting and already a week behind because of the weather. Of course, Alan is so adept at jumping around and knows the area very well."

He recalls he was fully `briefed' about the `look'. For a series which had, even at that stage, been around for more than 20 years, this meant effectively more of the successful same.

"The big thing about the programme is, of course, the characters and the countryside. Most,probably about 70 per cent, is exteriors. It always looks bright and glossy. In reality - as I've already said - it's often far from that. It's technically the summer, but in this part of Yorkshire, summer can be technically anything but.

"We've had times when we just sit there endlessly under umbrellas, maybe done one shot of the day's schedule and hung around the rest of the day. It can then change back as quickly.

"There was one occasion on an episode which had Norman Wisdom in it when there was a police car chase. It started at 2pm and ended with them going into a lake literally around 9pm at night. It was almost pitch black. I was trying to do that with a battery light in a row boat and a bit of polystyrene. Only semi-successful," he smiles.

The weather, the tightness of some of the more remote locations and the demands on a veteran cast mean, says O'Shea, "you've got to be very quick on your feet and it tends to make you very adaptable."

A less drastic kind of adaptability was also the `prentice name of the game when O'Shea first started his career on the other side of the world in Wellington working as a general `gofer' in his father's small commercials studio.

He arrived in England in 1968, freelanced for a while as a focuspuller/loader before getting a holiday `relief' job in the BBC film department. When that became permanent, O'Shea was quickly involved in every kind of film work, "from the almost news like Nationwide - shot on reversal - to drama. Eventually I got a cameraman's job.

"I was `block' cameraman on the first couple of series of 40 Minutes which was shot on 16mm, mainly with available light. It was one of the early `fly-on-the-wall' type series. Then there were bits of Newsnight and Panorama.

"As well as the more routine film assignments, an increasingly distinguished bunch of documentaries also began to decorate his CV, taking him to places like Africa for both The World About Us and for David Harrison's series titled, appropriately enough, The Africans.

With director Paul Hamann he made The Duty Men, which won a Broadcasting Press Guild Award, and the 1988 Grierson Award winner, 14 Days In May. The latter - "a very disturbing piece," he reflects still all these years later - followed the last fortnight in the life of convicted killer Edward Earl Johnson on Death Row in Mississippi's notorious Parchman prison.

As well as the `docos' there was also a cult sitcom (Dear John) and a well-received BBC drama, Sweet Nothing, directed by Tony Smith and starring the late Charlotte Coleman, about kids living rough on the streets - "I think my documentary back-ground helped there," says O'Shea.

Certainly places like, say, Parchman and the Southern Sudan couldn't seem further away as he makes his now regular pilgrimage north to Holmfirth. Yes, he has to admit, the place has turned into a bit of a tourist trap and there are times when you can hardly move for film crews.

But it's equally clear he loves the gig and continues to get much enjoyment from it. "Certainly I wish that I had more time or done this or that better. It's a nice part of the world and the cast is so good. Peter [Sallis] and Frank [Thornton] are genuinely amusing in real life and seem to see the funny side in most things - usually me... especially when they can see I'm struggling. Luckily I have Yorkshire technicians to keep me on the straight and narrow."

O'Shea's been shooting on Fuji for the last couple of years: "I'm very impressed with the Daylight stocks, the 64 and 250. Quite a lot of the interiors we use have ambient light and so I'm able to take all my HMI lights, add to them and shoot with the 250. When we get back to the studio, usually Shepperton, I go to the 250 Tungsten. That's excellent too.

"The last word must go to producer-director Bell: "What you don't need on something like LOTSW is a prima donna cameraman. Not only he is technically adept but Pat's also such a lovely personality.

"When you're dealing as we are with older actors you don't want to keep them hanging about. Remember, we're doing an episode every six days. Pat's always spot-on. I don't think we'd be able to keep up that pace or the quality without him." Quite a testimonial for the quietly-spoken Kiwi.