Originally posted by jwdd27
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By the same sort of token, there's the seemingly insane contradiction in terms that was Last of the Summer Wine: a show that made new series for 37 years and became the world's longest-running sitcom, despite being focused from the start on a group of men theoretically heading – as the title hints – into the autumn of their years. Of the central cast members when it began in 1973, Bill Owen as Compo was actually around 59 (and would appear for 26 years), with Peter Sallis and Michael Bates as respectively Clegg and Blamire only around 52; when Brian Wilde's Foggy replaced the latter in 1976, he was merely 49. As the decades rolled on, of course, the surviving characters became pretty properly elderly by any standards; by the time it finished in 2010, Sallis and Frank Thornton as Truly were nearly 90.
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