Goodnight Sweetheart (TV series)
Goodnight Sweetheart is a British science fiction time travel sitcom, starring Nicholas Lyndhurst, created by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, and produced by the BBC. The sitcom focuses on the life of Gary Sparrow, an accidental time traveller who leads a double life through the use of a time portal, which allows him to travel between the London of the 1990s and the London of the 1940s during the Second World War. The sitcom's creators, who also created Birds of a Feather and The New Statesman, wrote most of the plots for the episodes.
The sitcom premiered on BBC One in 18 November 1993, and ran for six series until its conclusion on 28 June 1999, with subsequent repeats after this date being aired on ITV3, Gold, Drama, Yesterday and Forces TV on Sky Digital. Lyndhurst's involvement in the sitcom allowed him to win the Most Popular Comedy Performer at the National Television Awards twice in 1998 and 1999. On 2 September 2016, the sitcom received a one-off special entitled Many Happy Returns, focused on events after the final episode. The sitcom itself later received a musical in 2017, while plans for a future sequel by Marks and Gran remain active as of 2019.
Premise
Goodnight Sweetheart focuses on the life of Gary Sparrow. In 1993, Gary works as a TV repairman, who struggles with his life and the marriage to his ambitious wife Yvonne, while being best friends with Ron Wheatcroft, a printer whose marriage is on the brink of breakdown. On attending a TV repair call-out in London's East End, Gary accidentally discovers a time portal at Duckett's Passage, which leads to war time London. The incident leads him to encountering Phoebe Bamford, a pretty barmaid who works in the "Royal Oak" pub, her father Eric who runs the pub, and Reg Deadman, a dim-witted but friendly policeman. The meeting with Phoebe leads Gary to strike up a relationship with her, and upon finding he can use the time portal to travel between this time period and the present, uses it to continue seeing Phoebe. To ensure his visits don't interfere with history, Gary brings in assistance from Ron as a confidant, not only to aid him with problems, but also to supply him with 1940s five-pound notes and ID documents.Gary finds himself soon leading a double life as a result of using the time portal. When visiting Phoebe, he explains his absences through working as a secret agent, using his knowledge of future wartime events to his advantage in the deception, while also claiming to be a singer-songwriter, passing off modern-day pop songs as his own, and supplying many items from the present that were rationed in wartime Britain. When with Yvonne, Gary initially claims his absences to be major call-outs for his work, but after quitting his job in 1995 to buy and run a shop called "Blitz and Pieces" – selling goods he acquires in the 1940s as rare memorabilia, to maintain access to the time portal in the present – he uses it to lie that he has to be absent to conduct buying trips for stock.
Over the next five years, life for Gary is further complicated by his relationship to the two women. Phoebe eventually takes over the running of the Royal Oak, later marrying Gary, despite him knowingly committing bigamy. The pair's marriage results in them having a son, before moving into a luxury flat in Mayfair, with Reg becoming a doorman in their building after retiring from the police. Although Yvonne becomes pregnant, only to suffer a miscarriage in the process, she later manages to become a success with her organic beauty products, opening a company and transforming into a millionaire, allowing her and Gary to own a luxury apartment. In addition, Ron later faces a divorce, losing both his home and control of his printing company, adding to Gary's problems, who eventually allows him to have the lease for his Mayfair flat in the present. During his time in the past, Gary has encounters with several historical figures of the period, including Winston Churchill, George Formby, and Noël Coward, while also dealing with some of the peculiar effects of time travel during various trips.
Goodnight Sweetheart eventually comes to its conclusion when the war in Europe comes to its conclusion on VE Day. By this time, Yvonne becomes suspicious of Gary's reasons for being absent and discovers him using the time portal. However, Gary becomes trapped in the past when the portal closes, following his actions in protecting Clement Attlee from an assassination attempt. Deciding to stay with Phoebe and their son, he leaves a message on the wall of his Mayfair flat, knowing Ron will find it, advising him to tell Yvonne the truth.
Many Happy Returns
In the one-off 2016 special, Gary is still married to Phoebe as they live through the 1960s with their son Michael, who is now a teenager. Gary, missing the modern world, decides to visit the hospital where his younger self is being born, but inadvertently encounters his father who faints, leaving him to hold his younger self. The incident causes Gary to be thrown into the future in the 2010s, arriving in the men's toilets of a trendy burger joint in East London, where his former shop resided. During his visit, Gary meets with Yvonne, now a multimillionaire investor, with Ron as her tenant in the basement. To his shock, Gary learns that Yvonne got pregnant before the closure of the time portal in 1999, and that he now has a 16-year-old daughter named Ellie. After meeting her, Gary contemplates living a double life again, upon finding a new time portal has opened, hoping to get to know his daughter while coping with the 1960s, leaving a plausible link for any future series.Episodes
A total of 59 episodes were made, including a Christmas special in 1995 and a special in 2016. Marks and Gran, the creators, wrote the first series; many later episodes were written by other writers.As in Marks and Gran's sitcom Get Back, most episodes of Goodnight Sweetheart — and the programme itself – were named after popular song titles, others being derived from film titles. The show is named after the song "Goodnight, Sweetheart", a popular song of the 1930s and 1940s, popularised by Al Bowlly in 1931; it was later sung by Nick Curtis as the series signature tune. During one episode Gary and Phoebe refer to Bowlly's death during the Second World War.
Because of a script-editing error, two different episodes were both titled "In the Mood". There is no special connection between these two episodes.
Cast
DVD releases
All six series and the 1995 Christmas Special have been released on DVD in the UK with edits made to certain episodes, the Christmas special was released on the third series DVD. The first five series have been released in Australia.- Note although the 2016 special "Many Happy Returns" has not been released onto DVD it was released digitally September 2016 on BBC Store.
Future
On 5 July 2016 it was announced that the show would be returning to BBC One for a one-off special episode, as part of the BBC's "landmark sitcom season". Unlike the original series, which was filmed in London, it was filmed and produced at dock10 studios, in Salford Quays. Original writers Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran wrote the script, and original star, Nicholas Lyndhurst, returned to the role of Gary Sparrow.
The special episode aired on 2 September 2016 on BBC One. It received overwhelming praise by fans of the show and was trending on Twitter for eight hours after it been broadcast. Writers Marks and Gran announced on Twitter on 6 October that the BBC had passed on making a new series.
In 2017, Marks and Gran said they are working as hard as they can to bring Goodnight Sweetheart back to TV screens as soon as they can with the possibilities of a new channel to broadcast future episodes.