| rdfs:comment | - Seventies Britcom centred on workers of the Luxton & District Traction Company. The main characters are Stan Butler, a bus driver, and his best mate and conductor, Jack Harper. Their arch-nemesis is pen-pushing bureaucrat bus inspector Cyril "Blakey" Blake. Recurring characters include Stan's mum, sister Olive and brother-in-law Arthur. Olive and Arthur are unhappily married, which is often joked about. Seventy-four episodes were made from 1969 to 1973. Three spinoff films were also made. Came fifty-third in Britains Best Sitcom.
- On The Buses was an extremely popular television situation comedy, written by Ronald Wolfe and Ronald Chesney, which began in 1969. Its setting was the Luxton and District Traction Company, where Stan Butler (played by Reg Varney) worked as a bus driver. His conductor was Jack Harper (played by Bob Grant) and the fly-in-the-ointment of his life was Inspector Blake (played by Stephen Lewis) - overly officious and with an appearance somewhat reminiscent of Adolf Hitler. Not that Inspector Blake's job was an easy one - Stan and Jack were invariably late for work and unreliable, and made his life miserable too. Stan lived with his mother (played by Cicely Courtneidge and later, Doris Hare), as did his sister, Olive (Anna Karen), and her husband, Arthur (Michael Robbins).
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| abstract | - Seventies Britcom centred on workers of the Luxton & District Traction Company. The main characters are Stan Butler, a bus driver, and his best mate and conductor, Jack Harper. Their arch-nemesis is pen-pushing bureaucrat bus inspector Cyril "Blakey" Blake. Recurring characters include Stan's mum, sister Olive and brother-in-law Arthur. Olive and Arthur are unhappily married, which is often joked about. Seventy-four episodes were made from 1969 to 1973. Three spinoff films were also made. On the Buses was one of the earliest British sitcoms to centre on working-class people's lives. Much of the humour comes from Stan and Jack's attempts at chatting up women, while trying to get out of doing any work. Critics derided the show as being vulgar, but it was hugely popular with audiences. Some episodes were watched by 16 million viewers, a figure unknown today, due to the splintering of the British televsion market. Do not confuse with a character being Put on a Bus. Though come to think of it, Stan leaves the series for Oop North, on the grounds that bus drivers make more money there, thus he literally was Put on a Bus. Also, this series is not to be confused with Run Over By A Bus, or Having a Bus Dropped on Him or any other Bus Trope. Came fifty-third in Britains Best Sitcom.
* All Men Are Perverts - Jack and Stan are forever skirt-chasing, much to Blakey's disgust.
* Blind Without'Em - Olive loses her glasses on a regular basis, and of course can see nothing without them.
* British Accents
* Double Entendre - a mainstay of the humour
* Have a Gay Old Time - "There's always gay life on the buses/make sure you leave your bird at home".
* Foreign People Are Sexy - the infamous episode where the boys pull a couple of Swedish birds.
* Housewife - Stan's mum, a totally archetypal British 1950s housewife with a scarf perpetually over her hair
* Loveable Rogue - Jack and Stan
* The Movie - Actually three - On the Buses (1971), Mutiny on the Buses (1972), and Holiday on the Buses (1973)
* The first movie is notable for being the most successful film that Hammer Film Productions ever made. Yes, that Hammer.
* Naughty by Night - well, Olive would like to be, but Arthur has other ideas...
* No Accounting for Taste - Olive and Arthur are a brilliantly ghastly combination.
* Popcultural Osmosis - "Blakey from On The Buses" is sometimes referred to in conversation (as a comparison to people) by other people who've never seen the series.
* Sitcom Character Archetypes - Jack and Stan are Wisecrackers, Blakey is The Bully, Arthur is The Stick, and Olive is The Dork.
* The Chew Toy - poor Olive, destined to be dumped on and have fat jokes told about her, despite being played by an ex-model, who also made nudie pictures.
* Three Is Company
* Wardrobe Malfunction leading to Disaster Dominoes at the beginning of the third movie.
- On The Buses was an extremely popular television situation comedy, written by Ronald Wolfe and Ronald Chesney, which began in 1969. Its setting was the Luxton and District Traction Company, where Stan Butler (played by Reg Varney) worked as a bus driver. His conductor was Jack Harper (played by Bob Grant) and the fly-in-the-ointment of his life was Inspector Blake (played by Stephen Lewis) - overly officious and with an appearance somewhat reminiscent of Adolf Hitler. Not that Inspector Blake's job was an easy one - Stan and Jack were invariably late for work and unreliable, and made his life miserable too. Stan lived with his mother (played by Cicely Courtneidge and later, Doris Hare), as did his sister, Olive (Anna Karen), and her husband, Arthur (Michael Robbins). All of these characters would appear in the Look-In strip although, understandably, it focused mainly on the antics of Stan, Jack and Blakey. The weekly instalments avoided the sexual innuendo of the TV episodes, instead concentrating on the battle of wits (or lack of) between Blakey on the one hand, and Stan and Jack on the other. The writers included Scott Goodall and Geoff Cowan. Harry North was the artist for the entire run, creating some wonderful comedic scenes as well as some stunning depictions of rainy and snowy settings. Interestingly, he had worked as a bus driver for a period. The television series went through some changes as the years passed and, for the most part, these were reflected in the strip. Arthur makes his final appearance in the Look-In stories a few weeks after Michael Robbins left the series at the end of its sixth season, and when Reg Varney left part-way through its seventh season, Stan is immediately removed from the Look-In strip. Stan's final appearance is in the issue for 24/3/73 (No.13). Thereafter, the stories would focus on Blakey and Jack, the pair becoming a double act of sorts, with Blakey now living in Stan's old room (as did his television counterpart). Oddly, the masthead continued to include Reg Varney's character; the photograph of Stan was not removed until issue No. 8 for 1974. All the stories are good, but these later Blakey-Jack stories are among the best, both in terms of script and artwork. Blakey and Jack on holiday (31/3/73 - No.14 to 21/4/73 - No.17), with each of them going through the same actions and with the same thoughts as the other, is wonderful, and the final story is particularly noteworthy, inspired by another television programme of the time which featured in Look-In, namely Kung Fu. In an issue which has David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine on the cover (state issue number), the reader is shown Jack as Kwai Chang Harper, barefooted, with a rolled up sleeping mat over his shoulder and spouting wisdom Oriental-style. Taking the Kung Fu theme further, there is a driver or conductor (it is unclear which) named Frank at the depot, who bears an uncanny likeness to a somewhat belligerent Master Po - though just what a blind conductor/driver is doing in a bus depot is perhaps best left unasked. It's interesting to note that one instalment of this story was in monochrome, the only one of all the weekly parts to be so. As the strip approached its end, Harry North began work on the single-page colour instalments of 'Doctor in Charge' for Look-In, and it may be that On the Buses suffered due to this extra workload. But with the three-day week only recently ended and further industrial action to come, the On the Buses strip may simply have been another victim of the politics of the time. (Article by Kim Stevens)
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