On the Buses
Broadcast
25th December 1970
© LWT London Weekend Television
In a 1989 BBC documentary, John Cleese tried to explain the bizarre appeal of certain comedy shows, and observed that On The Buses repeats were top-raters in Yugoslavia, with subtitles in Serbo-Croatian. The 76 episodes passed their sell-by date in the mid-1970s, but one cannot deny that the writers Ronald Wolfe & Ronald Chesney created a big hit. The first two series were made in 1969 in monochrome; the first was blessed with live-action titles, but from series 2 onwards the intros were animated.