IAN LA FRENAIS. Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, 7 January 1937. Attended Dame Allan's School, Northumberland. Married: Doris Vartan in 1984; one stepson. Worked as insurance salesman before establishing reputation as a screenwriter and producer; formed comedy writing partnership with BBC producer Dick Clement; partner, with Clement and Allan McKeown, in Witzend Productions. Recipient: British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards; Broadcasting Guild Awards; Evening News Award; Pye Television Award; Screen Writers' Guild Award; Society of Television Critics Award; Writers' Guild of America Award; London Film Critics Circle Award; Evening Standard Peter Sellers Award, 1991. Address: Elliot Webb/Bob Broder, Broder-Kurland-Webb-Uffner Agency, 8439 Sunset Boulevard, Suite 402, Los Angeles, California 90069, U.S.A.

TELEVISION SERIES

1965-68 The Likely Lads (with Dick Clement)
1968     The Adventures of Lucky Jim (with Dick                         Clement)
1972     The Train Now Standing
1973-74 Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? (with                         Dick Clement)
1973      Seven of One (with Dick Clement)
1974     Thick as Thieves (with Dick Clement)
1974-77 Porridge (with Dick Clement)
1975      Comedy Playhouse (with Dick Clement)
1976-77 On the Rocks
1978     Going Straight (with Dick Clement)
1979     Billy
1983     Further Adventures of Lucky Jim (with Dick                         Clement)
1983-84 Auf Wiedersehen Pet (with Dick Clement)
1985     Mog (with Dick Clement)
1986     Lovejoy
1990     Spender (with Jimmy Nail)
1990     Freddie and Max (with Dick Clement)
1991     Old Boy Network (with Dick Clement)
1993     Tracey Ullman: A Class Act (with others)
1993     Full Stretch (with Dick Clement)
1993     Over the Rainbow (with Dick Clement)

MADE-FOR-TELEVISION MOVIE

1983 Sunset Limousine (with Wayne Kline)

TELEVISION SPECIALS (with Dick Clement)

1980 My Wife Next Door
1981 Mr and Mrs Dracula
1982 There Goes the Neighbourhood
1993 Tracy Ullman Special

FILMS (writer)

The Jokers (with Dick Clement), 1967; The Touchables (with Dick Clement), 1968; Hannibal Brooks (with Dick Clement and Tom Wright), 1969; Otley (with Dick Clement), 1969; The Virgin Soldiers (with John Hopkins and John McGrath), 1970; Villain (with Dick Clement and Al Lettieri), 1971; Catch Me a Spy (with Dick Clement), 1971; The Likely Lads (with Dick Clement), 1976; It's Not the Size That Counts (with Dick Clement and Sid Collin), 1979; To Russia... with Elton, 1979; Doing Time (with Dick Clement), 1979; The Prisoner of Zenda (with Dick Clement), 1979; Water (with Dick Clement and Bill Persky), 1985; Vice Versa (with Dick Clement), 1988; Wilt (with Dick Clement), 1989; The Commitments (with Dick Clement and Roddy Doyle), 1991.

FILMS (producer)

Porridge (with Dick Clement), 1979; Doing Time (with Allan McKeown), 1979; To Russia... with Elton, 1979; Bullshot, 1983; Water (with Dick Clement), 1985; Vice Versa (with Dick Clement), 1988; Wilt (with Dick Clement), 1989; The Commitments (with Dick Clement and Marc Abraham), 1991.

STAGE (writer)

Billy, 1974; Anyone for Denis? (co-producer), 1982.

PUBLICATIONS

The Likely Lads, with Dick Clement; Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?, with Dick Clement; Porridge, with Dick Clement. Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, with Dick Clement.

 

See also Likely Lads

 

 

 

   

Ian La Frenais ranks among British television's most accomplished comedy writers, most of his greatest successes being collaborations with BBC writer-producer Dick Clement; with Clement he has contributed several of the most enduringly popular comedy series of the last three decades.

La Frenais's early experience of life as an insurance salesman in his native Newcastle upon Tyne was to prove invaluable when he came to write the first of the classic comedy series that he created in partnership with Clement, whom he happened to meet while on holiday and with whom he devised a sketch about two cocky northern lads for Clement's director's exams. The BBC were much impressed by the scenario the pair suggested and in due course their idea was realised in the massive hit The Likely Lads, which was to become one of the fledgling BBC2's first big successes. The series, revolving around the squabbles and contrasting aspirations of the two friends Bob Ferris (Rodney Bewes) and Terry Collier (James Bolam). La Frenais's writing showed facility with characterization and an easy grasp of northern traits and humour, as well as a certain acuteness in exposing the absurdities of the British class system in a rapidly changing world. Sequels all too often turn out to lack the flair and originality of originals. In this case when the series was revived some years later as Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?, with Bob now engaged to be married and an even more vituperative Terry newly released from the Army, the critics were unanimous in finding the humour still sharper and more effective. There was no dissent when the programme was voted Best Situation Comedy of the Year in 1973.

Clement and La Frenais were to return to the humour of the north-east of England at regular intervals over the ensuing years, notably in the extraordinarily successful series Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, about a gang of Geordie building labourers obliged to pursue their trade in Germany, and in Spender, which starred former Auf Wiedersehen bricklayer Jimmy Nail. However, the pair were to prove that they were by no means restricted to purely regional comedy drama and in the mid-1970s they scored another huge hit with the classic prison comedy Porridge, starring the multi-faceted comedian Ronnie Barker.

Barker's cockney Norman Stanley Fletcher, an habitual criminal obliged by his innate good nature to guide his young cellmate Godber (Richard Beckinsale) through the vicissitudes and dangers of life behind bars, was hailed as a masterpiece of comic invention and the programme became a favourite of prison audiences throughout the country. A sequel, Going Straight, which followed Fletcher's life after his release was less successful, lacking the dramatic tension that came with the confines of the original. In some respects Clement and La Frenais had already had a dry run for Porridge in their series Thick as Thieves, in which two crooks (Bob Hoskins and John Thaw) competed for the love of the same woman. This series ended after just eight episodes, when Thaw began work on The Sweeney police series. The original plan had been to return the two central characters to prison, where their relationship would have to adjust to new circumstances.

Collaborative efforts on new situation comedies in the 1990s -- including the disappointing Full Stretch, about a luxury car-hire business -- have so far proved less notable. Though, with Clement, La Frenais enjoyed significant success as a writer for the cinema with his script for the cult film The Commitments (a triumph that prompted the pair to attempt a television version under the title Over the Rainbow). Rather more successful in terms of the small screen in recent years has been La Frenais's solo contribution as writer to the popular Lovejoy series, adaptations for television of the Jonathan Gash novels about an antiques dealer with an eye for the main chance (and for the ladies). As before, La Frenais's easy humour and skillful characterization was deemed essential to the show's success.

-David Pickering