Going Straight

Going Straight is a BBC sitcom which was a direct spin-off from Porridge, starring Ronnie Barker as Norman Stanley Fletcher, newly released from the fictional Slade Prison where the earlier series had been set.

For other uses, see Going Straight (disambiguation).

Going Straight
Going Straight main title
Created byDick Clement and
Ian La Frenais
Written byDick Clement and
Ian La Frenais
Directed bySydney Lotterby
StarringRonnie Barker
Richard Beckinsale
Patricia Brake
Nicholas Lyndhurst
Country of originUnited Kingdom
No. of episodes6 (List of episodes)
Production
Producer(s)Sydney Lotterby
Editor(s)Bill Wright
Running time30 Mins
DistributorBBC Worldwide
2entertain
ABC (Australia, home video)
Release
Original networkBBC One
Original release24 February –
7 April 1978
Chronology
Preceded byPorridge (1974–77)
Followed byLife Beyond the Box: Norman Stanley Fletcher (2003)

It sees Fletcher trying to become an honest member of society, having vowed to stay away from crime on his release. The title refers to this: "straight" is a slang term meaning being honest, in contrast to "bent", i.e. dishonest.

Also re-appearing was Richard Beckinsale as Lennie Godber, who had been Fletcher's naïve young cellmate and was now in a relationship with Fletcher's daughter Ingrid (Patricia Brake). Her brother Raymond was played by a teenage Nicholas Lyndhurst.

One series of six episodes was made in 1978. It attracted an audience of over 15 million viewers[1] and won a BAFTA award in March 1979, but hopes of a further series had already been dashed by Beckinsale's premature death earlier the same month.

Episodes
Main article: List of Porridge episodes § Going Straight

Six episodes of Going Straight, all written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, were produced for the BBC. The show began airing on 24 February and ended on 7 April 1978. All episodes had a running time of 30 minutes.

Theme tune

The theme tune, sung by Ronnie Barker, detailed Fletch's determination to go straight, an ambition first laid out in the Porridge episode "Men Without Women":[2] This was released as 7-inch single by EMI records. The B-side is a track called "The String Bean Queen'"

gollark: (my server's HDD, I checked with `smartctl`)
gollark: "Manufactured in week 18 of year 2012"
gollark: I don't know how old it is exactly, but I kind of expect it to randomly fail at any moment.
gollark: It's on an ancient 7200RPM SAS disk.
gollark: My server's only got 4GB of RAM and... maybe 4 of swap, IIRC?

References
  1. Information published on DVD back cover
  2. "The Full Lyrics to the Theme Tune from Going Straight". Retrieved 25 January 2009.
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