John Esmonde and Bob Larbey's L.W.T. school sitcom 'Please Sir!' began in 1968, became a huge hit, and ended in 1972. Running concurrently with Season 4 was the first run of this spin-off, chronicling the further exploits of 5C after graduating into the big bad world. Eric Duffy ( Peter Cleall ) was now a painter and decorator in brother Monty's ( Prentis Hancock ) firm; Frankie Abbott ( David Barry ) donned a fedora and a trench coat to be a tea-boy in Archie Drew's ( Neil Wilson ) seedy detective agency; Maureen Bullock ( Liz Gebhardt ) became a state-registered nurse; Sharon Eversleigh ( Carol Hawkins ) sold frocks in a boutique; stable boy was Dennis Dunstable's ( the late Peter Denyer ) vocation, and Peter Craven ( Leon Vitali ) ran errands for London gangster Stanley Bowler ( George Baker ). Though a number of episodes featured the gang together, by and large the plots rotated around them individually - Frankie one week, Dennis the next, then Maureen - with the others in supporting roles. There was never any danger of repetition, seeing how viewers could not be sure who might dominate the action in any given week. To maintain character interaction, they were seen either in a pub ( which was quite wrong as they were legally under age ) or a coffee bar.
To give the new kid on the block a fighting chance, several 'Please Sir!' characters made guest appearances, including 'Mr.Price' ( Richard Davies ), 'Smithy' ( Erik Chitty ), 'Mr.Hedges' ( John Alderton ) and new wife Penny ( Jill Kerman ). Sadly we never saw Potter ( Deryck Guyler ) or Miss Ewell ( Joan Sanderson ) there too.
Two major cast changes occurred before Season 1 got underway. Malcolm McFee had other commitments, so the role of 'Peter Craven' was given to Leon Vitali ( later a successful director ). He was not bad in the role but a little too similar to Cleall's 'Duffy'. Carol Hawkins replaced Penny Spencer as tarty 'Sharon Eversleigh' in the 'Please Sir!' movie, and remained in the role for 'The Fenn Street Gang'. Spencer had asked for a pay rise and was sacked to make an example of her should other cast members think of following suit. Season 1 featured scripts by other writers such as Geoff Rowley and Andy Baker and Tony Bilbow ( also a film critic ), all of whom had worked on Season 4 of 'Please Sir!'. When Season 2 of 'Gang' began production, the parent show had ended so it was alright for Esmonde and Larbey to take full control of the writing duties again.
One of Season 1's best episodes was 'The Thin Yellow Line' in which Frankie joins the Army, only to find it is not all John Wayne gung ho heroics. Tony Selby was the swaggering Sergeant-Major, and here you can plainly see the inspiration for 'Get Some In!'. 'Changing Partners' had no Gang members whatever, and focused instead on Hedges and Penny. My personal favourite was Season 2's 'The Loneliest Night Of The Week' in which Frankie and Dennis hit a Soho nightclub looking for girls. New characters came on the scene, such as Rosalind Eliot's dimwitted 'Celeste Lockhart', who nearly ( if you can believe it ) married Frankie.
'Dennis' and 'Maureen' failed to return for Season 3, hence when Duffy and Sharon finally tied the knot their friends were conspicuously absent. In the final episode, Sharon announced her pregnancy.
'Gang' was replaced in the Sunday night schedules by 'Bowler', a spin-off of a spin-off. It had enjoyed a decent run ( there was a comic strip in 'Look-In' ), though predictably was nowhere near as successful as its predecessor. Just as 'Please Sir!' was at its best with the original 5C, so then the gang were funniest when rebelling against the comic authority figures of 'Cromwell' and 'Potter'. In an early 'Gang' episode, Dennis was heard pining for his school days when all his friends were around him. I think many viewers sympathised.
