Prismark10 Despite their protestations ITV are not known for their sit-coms. It is usually a mirth fee zone but every now and then a gem is discovered and Shelly is a bona fide, premium grade comedy classic.Hywel Bennett plays the over educated professional layabout Shelley whose mission in life is to avoid work and muse about life. It was anti establishment and anti Tory which gave it a political edge.It had sharp writing and funny without resorting to knockabout comedy. In Hywel Bennett they found the perfect actor. Bennett was someone who was a rising star in the late 1960s but problems in his personal life meant he hit skid row in the early 70s and was out of the limelight until the late 1970s.Shelley established him back to the forefront, he might had looked older and less baby faced than before but still attractive enough to make Shelley appealing enough to women and an everyman philosopher without turning to bombast.Later series had to deal with issues when his screen wife left the show and had him musing to a tape recorder to his daughter now relocated to Canada. Some years later Shelly returned in new episodes, more wiser, more cynical but still funny as ever. A lasting tribute to Hywel Bennett.

naseby A lost classic TV series sometimes seen on satellite.(The best place for repeats, but worthwhile when they dig up classics like this!)James Shelley (The excellent actor, Hywel Bennett) is an ex-Uni over-qualified person for the jobs market. With qualifications as long as his arm, surely there's something he could do though - well, his best virtue is as a professional layabout!Constantly at odds with the establishment, that especially in Thatcherite 1980's Britain is uncompromising, he manages to enter into mouthy exchanges, well AT the Labour Exchanges! With his pregnant wife-to-be Fran, where the series starts, there will obviously have to be a time when he'll have to woefully except employment. Even when he does, his battle begins again, IN work! One of my favourite lines is where he can't believe in the amount of tax that can actually be taken from our wage packets. (This is where we lose any contempt for the layabout we may have had and join him!)"give it back... the booty, the swag!" On being informed by the first tax official the amount he's had deducted is right: "They can't take this much ... not without a gun and a getaway car!" on entering the office of the next tax official: "Look, just hand it back, and we'll say no more about it!" At one point, he visits a psychiatrist on someone else's behalf, only to tell the shrink : "Try and take things easier...cut down on the rubbish you talk, and if you're not feeling better in a week...kill yourself!"It's actually at this point visiting the taxman really, never mind being in work that he decides to marry Fran - as the taxman informs him he'd get more money with the married allowance (After saying to the taxman that if a single person gets less, it's like 'fining' them for not being married - "Do you put them in prison if they continue?!"). The series progresses well, especially the quick-talker's banter with his landlady, Mrs 'H' (Jospehine Tewson)whom he's at odds with. As ProfessorStahlman rightly says, after this, (1981+) when Fran left, it wore decidedly tiresome, not because of Hywel Bennett, but it just didn't work when James was in work, so long, trying to earn a crust, and having had a daughter, who lived in Canada with Fran from his now-defunct relationship with her. A good script at times nonetheless and the early series are always a definite must-see!

ShadeGrenade University graduate James Shelley is an unemployment statistic in Thatcher's Britain. With a difference. He doesn't work because he doesn't want to. With girlfriend Fran, he lives in Mrs.Hawkins' boarding house in Pangloss Road. When not laying about in bed all day he is to be found either in the pub or else engaging in witty repartee with the harassed staff of the local Unemployment Benefit Office. The timing of 'Shelley' was perfect; as unemployment rose to three million in the early '80's, the character was seen by some as a champion of the underdog, a man who shrugged off the insults of toffee-nosed D.H.S.S. officers, and gave as good as he got. Hywel Bennett was outstanding as Shelley, and Peter Tilbury's scripts were a world away from normal I.T.V. sitcom fare. Belinda Sinclair made a good foil, often matching him insult for insult. When Fran departed ( along with Tilbury ), the show declined in quality, despite first-rate scripts by Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin, as Shelley seemed lonely and down in the dumps on his own. It recovered some of its sparkle in 1988 when it returned as 'The Return Of Shelley', taking the opportunity to mock the 'yuppie' phenomenon of the time. 'Rising Damp' is rightly regarded as I.T.V.'s best sitcom, but in my view 'Shelley' runs it a close second.