The Liver Birds

The Liver Birds
Polly James (left) and Nerys Hughes (right)
Genre	Sitcom
Created by	Carla Lane Myra Taylor
Written by	Carla Lane Myra Taylor Lew Schwarz Jack Seddon David Pursall
Starring	Polly James Pauline Collins (Series 1 only) Nerys Hughes Elizabeth Estensen Mollie Sugden (Series 2 – End)
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
No. of series	10
No. of episodes	86
Production
Running time	24 minutes
Release
Original network	BBC1
Original release	Original Series: 14 April 1969 – 5 January 1979 Revival Series: 6 May – 24 June 1996

The Liver Birds is a British sitcom, set in Liverpool, North West England, which aired on BBC1 from April 1969 to January 1979, and again in 1996. The show was created by Carla Lane and Myra Taylor. The two Liverpudlian housewives had met at a local writers club and decided to pool their talents. Having been invited to London by Michael Mills, the BBC's then Head of Comedy, and asked to write about two women sharing a flat, Mills brought in sitcom expert Sydney Lotterby to work with the writing team.

Lotterby had previously worked with Eric Sykes and Sheila Hancock, and on The Likely Lads. Carla Lane wrote most of the episodes, Taylor co-writing only the first two series. The pilot was shown in April 1969 as an episode of Comedy Playhouse, the BBC's breeding ground for sitcoms at the time.

The series charted the ups and downs of two 'dolly birds' sharing a flat on Liverpool's Huskisson Street, concentrating on the two young single women's dealings with boyfriends, work, parents and each other. Dressed in the best 1970s fashions, they looked for romance in a loose female equivalent of The Likely Lads.

The pilot and Series 1 starred Pauline Collins as Dawn and Polly James as Beryl Hennessey. In Series 2, Nerys Hughes debuted as Sandra Hutchinson, replacing Dawn for the rest of the programme's run. The Beryl-and-Sandra pairing is generally regarded as the programme's best period. Beryl was the more 'common' one, while Sandra was soft-spoken and more refined, due to the influence of her snobbish, overbearing mother (Mollie Sugden).

Carla Lane drew on her own mother for the character – "Mrs. Hutchinson, I think she was my mother. I'm sure she was my mother". Beryl's 'common' mother (the Hennesseys live in Bootle, a working class district north of the city) was played by Sheila Fay. Future Emmerdale actor Elizabeth Estensen as Carol Boswell replaced Beryl from Series 5 onwards.