The Bargee

Harry H. Corbett - Hemel Pike
Hugh Griffith - Joe Turnbull
Eric Sykes - The Mariner
Ronnie Barker - Ronnie
Julia Foster - Christine Turnbull
Miriam Karlin - Nellie Marsh
Eric Barker - Mr Parkes
Derek Nimmo - Dr. Scott
Norman Bird - Albert Williams
Richard Briers - Tomkins

Gentle 60s comedy written by one Britain’s most famous comedy script teams, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, responsible for Steptoe & Son and Hancock.

The Bargee follows the misadventures of womanising barge worker Hemel Pike (Harry H. Corbett), making his living travelling the waterways of England, always making sure there's a woman waiting for him at every port of call. Hemel’s motto is that the only way to get him off the canals would be to fill them in. Before each trip Hemel and his fellow bargee Ronnie (Ronnie Barker) plot how far they have to travel and which stops to make – ensuring there’s an accommodating female at each stay. Along the way they meet various canal travellers, the first of which is an absurd mariner (Eric Sykes) who behaves as if he were the reincarnation of Admiral Lord Nelson – nicknamed ‘Jack Hawkins’ by Ronnie.

Christine (Julia Foster) is the one girl who plans to get Hemel off the canal and down the church isle, and while Ronnie keeps her irascible father Joe (Hugh Griffith) busy down the pub with a drinking contest the two have a clandestine liaison and discuss marriage. But Hemel’s carefree days seem to be over when following a fainting spell Christine is diagnosed as pregnant by Dr. Scott (Derek Nimmo), and Hemel has to face the wrath of her outraged father. Joe works as a canal lockkeeper, and armed with a shotgun, rigs an explosive charge to the canal gates, and threatens to blockade the canal until the person responsible for putting his daughter in the family way confesses. Is Hemel’s relaxed life on the British waterways over?