Never Mind the Quality Feel the Width
| Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Sitcom |
| Created by |
Vince Powell Harry Driver |
| Starring |
John Bluthal Joe Lynch Bernard Spear Cyril Shaps Eamon Kelly |
| Country of origin | UK |
| No. of series | 6 (+ pilot) |
| No. of episodes | 41 (including mini Christmas special) |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) |
Leonard White Ronnie Baxter Stuart Allen Alan Tarrant |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Release | |
| Original network |
ABC Television (pilot + series 1–2) Thames Television (series 3–6) ITV |
| Original release | 18 February 1967 – 14 September 1971 |
Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width is a British television sitcom first broadcast in 1967 as a single play in the Armchair Theatre anthology series, later becoming a series of half-hour episodes, which ran until 1971. A total of 40 episodes were made, all but one of them being believed to have aired.
It was originally made by ABC Television for the ITV network, with its production being continued by Thames Television.
The plots revolved around two tailors in business together. Manny Cohen, played by John Bluthal, was Jewish, and Patrick Kelly, played by Joe Lynch, was Roman Catholic. Above their shop worked Lewtas (Bernard Spear) who was also Jewish and imported cloth. Two further prominent characters were Rabbi Levy (Christopher Benjamin in the pilot (he later reappeared as Dr Shapiro in a later episode), Cyril Shaps in series 1 to 4, David Nettheim and Jonathan Burn as Rabbi Stone in series 5) from the local synagogue, and Father Ryan (Denis Carey in the pilot, Eamon Kelly in series 1 to 4) from the local Catholic church. The Romanian-born Meier Tzelniker also made several appearances as Israel Bloom.
One episode featured Manny and Patrick trading the rights to display their pictures around the shop. When Patrick had two pictures of the Pope on the wall while Manny had one of Moshe Dayan, Manny's comment was "It's the going rate. Two Popes to one Moshe."
Another episode had Patrick, a singer, filling in at the synagogue for a sick cantor, on the occasion of a visit by the Chief Rabbi. Coached to sing phonetically in Hebrew, Patrick performs, every moment milked for comedic value. Finally the Chief Rabbi congratulates Patrick but reveals he knows something is up. When asked how he knows, he replies, "Simple. At the end of the service you genuflected and crossed yourself!" The episode title was "The Not-So-Kosher Cantor".
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