Birds Of A Feather, The BBC Series, 1989
As the 1980’s drew to close and a new decade dawned new sitcoms became a little less frequent giving way to a new wave of comedy shows such as Harry Enfield and Vic Reeves. The old favourites that had been around for years remained and there were some gems that often get forgotten against the back drop of what had gone before.
Birds Of A Feather was a real gem, the characters sparked laughter off one another and kept the audiences coming back for more. It ran for 9 series and clocked up an impressive 102 episodes.
Summary
Sisters Tracey Stubbs and Sharon Theodopolopodos are brought together when their husbands are sent to prison for armed robbery.
Sharon, lives in an Edmonton council flat, whilst Tracey lives in an expensive house in Chigwell, Essex. Their next-door neighbour, and later friend, Dorien Green is a middle-aged married woman who is constantly having affairs with younger men. In the later series the location is changed to Hainault.
When the two sisters come together Sharron moves in with Tracey, to give her support.
Clips
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Cast
Pauline Quirke – Sharron
Linda Robson – Tracey
Lesley Joseph – Dorien
Details
Channel: BBC1
Created By: Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran
Original Transmission Dates: 16th October 1989 – 24th December 1998
Extras
In 2009 rumours began to circulate about a new series, nothing materialised then in 2012 all three original actresses were involved in a touring stage show scheduled to begin in the spring of 2012. So popular was the stage show, a TV series was surely the next move.
In 2013 the BBC were offered the chance of a revived series, they were keen to see it back but only as a christmas special. The cast and writers felt it warrented a proper series and ITV agreed.
It returned for eight new episodes in 2013 but not on BBC but ITV, result the series was a smash, a Christmas Special in 2013 going into series two through to 2014.
You can watch the BBC series with repeats reguarly shown on free to view channel Drama and now on streaming srvice Britbox.