Cradle to Grave
| Cradle to Grave | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Sitcom |
| Written by |
Jeff Pope Danny Baker |
| Directed by | Sandy Johnson |
| Starring | Laurie Kynaston Peter Kay Lucy Speed Frankie Wilson Alice Sykes |
| Theme music composer | Cradle to the Grave (album) by Squeeze |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of series | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 8 |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Danny Baker |
| Producer(s) | Kate Crowther |
| Running time | 30 mins |
| Production company(s) | ITV Studios for BBC |
| Release | |
| Original network | BBC Two |
| Picture format | 16:9 |
| Original release | 3 September 2015 – present |
Cradle to Grave is a 2015 British sitcom set around the life of Danny Baker. According to a social media message posted by outgoing BBC Director of Television, Danny Cohen, the show (which ended in October 2015) has since been commissioned for a second series.
It's 1973 and fifteen year old Danny is our guide through the ups and downs of life with the Baker family. Dad Fred, known to all and sundry as 'Spud' is a proud south London docker with a penchant for rackets, fiddles and schemes, hopefully 'nice and tasty' ones. Wife Bet loves him deeply but longs for the family to go 'straight', and do daft things like pay taxes and put money in the electricity meter instead of always trying to scam it. With eldest daughter Sharon's Wedding looming and the docks facing closure and a switch to the dreaded 'containerisation', putting thousands of dockers out of work, times are challenging. So too are Danny's attempts to get closer to the opposite sex. Full of humour, warmth and drama with an accompanying soundtrack combining songs from the era with material from Squeeze's Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook, Cradle To Grave is based on actual events and characters.
The series is based on Danny Baker's autobiography Going to Sea in a Sieve, covering Baker's life in south London during the 1970s.
Sean O'Grady of The Independent criticised the cockney accents as "a load of old pony". Jasper Rees of The Daily Telegraph was more positive, describing it as "niftily scripted" and a "savvy, up-to-the-minute comedy" despite its 1970s setting, and "a lot closer to the knuckle – and far funnier – than anything in, say, The Liver Birds or The Likely Lads".Chortle's Steve Bennett was positive about the cast and soundtrack, and described the first episode as "frequently funny, with an episodic structure that delivers wry character-led laughs with the regularity of a sketch show", but noted that it lacked "a consistent tone or strong narrative" whilst Euan Ferguson of The Guardian described it as "enjoyable, but little more".
...
Wikipedia