Originally published in Current, April 21, 2003
By Steve Behrens

With its final season of new shows airing in America, the Judi Dench comedy As Time Goes By has climbed to the top of the Britcom heap.

The program aired on public TV stations reaching 88 percent of the country in February, edging out Britcom royalty Keeping Up Appearances (84 percent), Are You Being Served (76 percent) and Waiting for God (53 percent), according to Julius Cain, v.p. of BBC Worldwide Americas, which distributes the series in the United States.

In ratings, Cain says, it was neck and neck with Keeping Up Appearances and was the No. 1 Britcom over the past couple of months.

As Time Goes By ties with Keeping Up Appearances at a 1.4 national rating and a 3 share, according to Danielle Kemble, publicist for the producing organization, DLT Entertainment. Ratings ranged as high as 4.4 at WNPT in Nashville, 4.2 on Oklahoma ETV in Oklahoma City and 3.3 on KCET in Los Angeles.

"It's the best-pledging Britcom we have," says Lisa Martinez, communications director at WNEO/WEAO in Youngstown and Akron, Ohio. "I always call it our 'best loved.'"

Martinez says it's gentler than other top Britcoms, which depend on bawdy innuendo and slapstick. The romantic comedy pairs Dench with Geoffrey Palmer as a couple who resume a youthful romance when they meet again in middle age. Its appeal peaked last season with the Dench character's daughter and a friend both finding husbands. The last episode recaps the romance and marriage of the central couple.

Don Taffner Jr., v.p. of DLT Entertainment, says he'd like to reunite the cast for seasonal specials, which are popular with British broadcasters. The firm is also talking with Dench about several program proposals, he says.

As Time Goes By profits from an unusually long 12-year run on the BBC, which gave the completed series 68 episodes--far more than most British series, which tend to be limited in length because they are usually written by a single writer, according to Taffner. Syndication here began 10 years ago and probably will continue for years though DLT shot the last episodes in 2000.

John Cleese's Fawlty Towers, which was voted the greatest program in British TV history in a 2000 survey of producers and critics by the British Film Institute, has just 12 episodes, made in the 1970s. (For the complete Top 100, see www.bfi.org.uk/features/tv/100.)

Dallas's KERA imported Monty Python more than 25 years ago, but developed a "juggernaut effect" with audiences with the combination of Are You Being Served?, Keeping Up Appearances and others that "portray characters in situations that Americans perceive to be quintessentially British," according to Cain.

The audiences skew toward older women. Stations typically air blocks of Britcoms on Saturday evenings, sometimes in the company of Lawrence Welk Show reruns. New Hampshire PTV packs them in Tuesday primetime. Many stations air a few in fringe periods before and after primetime. Oklahoma ETV stacks Britcoms Sunday nights from 10 to midnight.

The top Britcoms are BBC-distributed, according to Cain, who sees the strongest competition coming from Mr. Bean, which returned to U.S. public TV in January for a third release through American Public Television (APT). The comedy starring Rowan Atkinson plays in 29 markets so far and 46 licensees have scheduled an animated version voiced by Atkinson, says APT Vice President Eric Luskin.

Web page posted April 22, 2003
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