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Hammer and companies such as EMI, Associated London, and British Lion dipped continually into the TV pot for ideas. Among their output were sequels to spin-offs (as with On the Buses, the film versions of Steptoe and Son, Up Pompeii and Till Death Us Do Part all generated further theatrical episodes) and a handful of films adapted from popular crime or drama series (The Sweeney; 1976, Callan; 1974, Man at the Top; 1973, Doomwatch; 1972). Initially, the films were as lively as anything else that was being produced. Dad’s Army (1971) retained some of the spark of its original series (BBC 1968-77), and saw its ensemble cast on good form; The Lovers (1972) was as good as any contemporary sex comedy; and Please, Sir (1971) was one of the earliest spin-offs to focus on a comic situation (a school vacation) that was well beyond the scope of a 25-minute TV episode.

But the problems of "opening out" a videotaped, studio-based sitcom were also immediately apparent. The school trip in Please, Sir set a precedent for all spin-offs that followed. The premise of sending the characters on holiday, it later seemed, was enough to justify an entire film, regardless of script. Consequently, Steptoe and Son went to Spain; the staff of Grace Brothers (in Are You Being Served?, 1977) took a package trip to the "Costa Plonka"; and George and Mildred (1980) celebrated their anniversary with a romantic weekend away.

Dad’s Army (1971) reflected a number of other problems that were to dog the genre. The original series, perhaps the most fondly remembered sitcom in British TV history, featured the adventures of a small-town branch of the "Home Guard" — a disparate group of men, too old to join the Army proper, who are "doing their bit" to defend the country from potential German attack during World War II. Episodes largely revolved around the interplay of the aging volunteers as they gathered in an old church hall to discuss drill and manoeuvres. To justify the cinematic version of the show, the filmmakers attempted to broaden its scope, routinely utilizing outdoor locations and bringing in characters only referred to in the series. But this achieved little except to destroy the cosy surrealism of the television format.

But the trend continued apace. Before long, companies were funding film versions of sitcoms that one might generously describe as pedestrian (Love Thy Neighbour;1973, Father Dear Father; 1973), as well as those that have since sunk into complete obscurity (Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width; 1972, That’s Your Funeral; 1972, For the Love of Ada; 1973). By the mid-seventies, spin-offs seemed to be content to coast along on sub-Carry On sexual innuendo, unwashed cameos by fading variety stars and perfunctory plot entanglements. Man About the House (1974), Hammer’s final foray into the genre, sadly wasted an opportunity to flesh out the characters of a decent, fairly daring sitcom (ITV 1973-76; US version — Three’s Company, 1977-81) and the aforementioned Are You Being Served? (1977) was a truly desperate attempt to stretch a mildly amusing half-hour into 90 gruelling minutes.

Two later films did stand out from their contemporaries. The Likely Lads (1976) and Porridge (1979), both written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, attempted to avoid the obvious pitfalls of the sitcom spin-off by actually developing and furthering the original material. Of the two, The Likely Lads is the more flawed film, centring as it does around a rather inane caravan episode, not unlike the lethargic escapades of a later Carry On or the obligatory trips of other spin-offs. But The Likely Lads kept the essence of the original series (BBC 1964-66 and 1973-74), which followed Bob (Rodney Bewes) and Terry (James Bolam), two young working-class lads from the industrial north east, as they grew from adolescence to maturity. Focusing on sexual escapades, boozing, factory work and the draw of marriage and class conformity, the series had been the sitcom counterpoint to the groundbreaking British movie Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960). The Likely Lads film, to its credit, drew on and expanded the tragicomic sense of loss and change that dominated the series’ later episodes.

Porridge is a better movie, perhaps because La Frenais and Clement themselves took over the producer and director roles respectively. It even gained a U.S. release under the title Doing Time. The great strength of the original, prison-set TV series (BBC 1974-77 [a US interpretation, On the Rocks lasted one season from 1975]) was the abundance of well-drawn characters, many of whom could be showcased in the more leisurely pace of a feature. In Porridge, the two "hero" convicts, Fletcher (Ronnie Barker) and Godber (Richard Beckinsale), unwittingly find themselves part of an elaborate escape plan, and have to break back into prison in order to serve the remainder of their time quietly. On film, the prison setting looks far more harsh and brutal than the cosier, studio-set TV series, but the warmth of the characterizations still comes through and the film evinces a sense of realism lacking in other sitcom spin-offs.

George and Mildred Despite this, the following year saw the abrupt end of sitcom spin-off. The two final films of this era were Rising Damp (1980) and George and Mildred (1980). Rising Damp took the safe option and simply reworked scenes that had already established the series (ITV 1974-78) as a classic, weaving them loosely into a feature narrative. Because of this, a lot of it works. George and Mildred, however, is one of the worst films ever made in Britain. The source series (ITV 1976-79) — tired marriage, lazy good-for-nothing husband, frustrated wife — was itself no milestone of TV comedy, but the film version is so strikingly bad, it seems to have been assembled with a genuine contempt for its audience. It is the archetypal example of why a sitcom should never be made into a film. Visually, it is an insult to the entire history of set design, blocking, cinematography, sound recording, editing, and mise-en-scene. Still, that’s not unusual for the genre; it’s not even unusual for small British films in general. But with fewer decent lines and less imagination than in half of a below-average 25-minute episode, George and Mildred is nothing less than an ordeal to endure.

More significantly, these two final films were imbued with a sense of morbidity. The late Richard Beckinsale was conspicuous by his absence from Rising Damp. A regular in the TV series, his death in 1979 (at 31) was an untimely tragedy that dealt a sharp blow to British comedy. Any attempt to revive Rising Damp without him somehow seemed in poor taste. Worse, George and Mildred was released just weeks after the death of one of its eponymous stars, Yootha Joyce. The double tragedy of these two early deaths not only added an unintentional tone of melancholy to the films, but also seemed portentous of the fate of the genre itself.

However, by this time the spin-off had played itself out and was not generating the kind of pocket-money profit the early seventies had seen. By 1980, Hammer and British Lion were all but defunct as filmmaking operations; EMI was limping along with some ill-advised U.S. co-productions. Even Lord Grade’s ITC, which was responsible for Porridge, Rising Damp, and George and Mildred, was about to go down with the catastrophic Raise the Titanic (1981). Further, the home video boom was closing cinemas up and down the country. 1981 saw UK feature film production at an all-time low of 24 films, compared to 96 in 1971. Similarly, admissions had dropped by roughly half in the same period. So the critics took a relaxing breath. The future looked to be sparse but worthy, intense and artistic. The puerile sitcom spin-off, for years the scourge of sensible, middlebrow opinion, was dead. But few critics cared or even noticed that, without it, British popular cinema — lowbrow, cheerful, and broad in appeal — had finally died as well.

When the sitcom spin-off made a tentative return with Bean in 1996, the suits had clearly done their homework. Bean was symptomatic of how British cinema had changed and how it had had to change to survive in the blockbuster era. Consequently, Bean was Americanised and — therefore — globalised. It still reworked the shaky TV situations, but set them in California. And it was a worldwide smash.

Two further British spin-offs have been made since — Guest House Paradiso (1999; from the BBC show Bottom) and Kevin and Perry Go Large (2000; from comedian Harry Enfield’s BBC sketch show). Guest House Paradiso — parochial, vulgar, unambitious — flopped. Kevin and Perry had a trendy Ibiza setting and a Europudding soundtrack — it was a moderate success. Clearly, if the reinvented British sitcom spin-off is to sustain itself as a successful genre, it seems that localized laughs are out of the question. Perhaps the producers will make more of an effort to translate them into proper "films" this time around, but it’s yet another nail in the coffin of the small, popular British movie. Every success like Bean, and, for that matter, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones’s Diary, is grist to the publicity mill that says British cinema is on the up, but it also represents that we have McDonald’s where greasy cafés or pubs used to be. Sure, Bean was a better-made film than 90 percent of the ’70s spin-offs, but it was another white flag as far as our national identity is concerned. Now and in the future, in Britain at least, popular cinema means American