An excellent start to the fifth series.
We get another scene in Clegg's kitchen and he's ironing again. When Foggy turns up to collect them for a trip to see the re-opening of a local steam railway, neither Clegg nor Compo is exactly keen. Maybe they reflect the people who weren't nostalgic for the steam age, with its dirt.
They certainly get a swift reminder of the drawbacks!
Most of the episode involves the trio's struggle with an inadvertently purloined loco and it's very entertaining, even if the best thing they could actually have done was just walk away - the engine would soon stop with no one stoking the fire.
The funniest scene (which is also actually quite creepy) is right at the end, when it looks like the engine has decided to follow them home!
This was apparently the favourite episode of Peter Sallis and one of Brian Wilde's too, and you can see why. It's definitely among the best.
It is nice to just focus on the three of them, but unless SW was going to end, it was always going to need to widen its character base, as the three central actors aged. I think it was actually handled pretty deftly.
We get another scene in Clegg's kitchen and he's ironing again. When Foggy turns up to collect them for a trip to see the re-opening of a local steam railway, neither Clegg nor Compo is exactly keen. Maybe they reflect the people who weren't nostalgic for the steam age, with its dirt.
They certainly get a swift reminder of the drawbacks!
Most of the episode involves the trio's struggle with an inadvertently purloined loco and it's very entertaining, even if the best thing they could actually have done was just walk away - the engine would soon stop with no one stoking the fire.
The funniest scene (which is also actually quite creepy) is right at the end, when it looks like the engine has decided to follow them home!
This was apparently the favourite episode of Peter Sallis and one of Brian Wilde's too, and you can see why. It's definitely among the best.
It is nice to just focus on the three of them, but unless SW was going to end, it was always going to need to widen its character base, as the three central actors aged. I think it was actually handled pretty deftly.