A Comedy On This Day: Dawson's Weekly - Where There's A Will (19 June 1975)

 As a Yorkshire Television production, I think that these playlets were probably the only specifically Northern comedies that Galton & Simpson ever wrote. The opening scene - the familiar scenario of a solicitor reading a will to a party of grieving relatives - is cast like a J. B. Priestley play or Last of the Summer Wine, with the grasping mourners including such familiar North Country performers as Kathy Staff and Bert Palmer.

 The reading of wills is one of those inherently dramatic and suspenseful situations that its almost impossible not to make at least slightly entertaining, and the writers and actors certainly know what they're doing in this scene. Richard Vernon's Solicitor: "As for George and Arthur, my two brothers in law, I leave them-" (close-up of Bert Palmer and John Sharp's expectant faces - "Yes?") "- with great pleasure".

 Naturally, distant cousin Dawson inherits the lot, with the absurd proviso that he has to get married in a week. The second half of the story is much less sure-footed, enlivened by scenes between Dawson and Roy Barraclough (although what the joke is with Barraclough fluctuates rather irritatingly - sometimes its the perception of suspect homosexuality, and sometimes the man's hopelessness with women and Dawson projecting himself as a man of the world - the second option is much the more amusing).