Alan JW Bell, who has died aged 85 after suffering from dementia, relished producing and directing the BBC’s whimsical sitcom Last of the Summer Wine for 29 years. Taking over in 1982 for the sixth series, nine years after the show’s launch, he increasingly made a showcase of the lush West Yorkshire countryside around Holmfirth, and introduced more slapstick and madcap stunts.
Interviewed for Morris Bright and Robert Ross’s book 30 Years of Last of the Summer Wine (2000), Bell recalled: “The BBC had, it seems, recognised my filmic bent and astutely realised that the high proportion of location filming in each episode would not be a problem in my hands.”
He also took account of Ronnie Hazlehurst’s incidental music. “When I read a script, I see the men walking across the countryside and I also hear the music,” explained Bell. “I tell the actors to walk for a while before they speak.”
But his preference for wide landscape shots, in the writer Roy Clarke’s sitcom featuring three elderly men reliving their childhood, was not shared by Brian Wilde, who starred as Foggy Dewhurst, alongside Bill Owen as Compo Simmonite and Peter Sallis as Norman Clegg. The actor preferred the closeups of the trio speaking their lines that had been favoured by the programme’s previous producer-director, Sydney Lotterby, and called for Lotterby’s return.
When Spike Milligan requested that Bell should make his 1982 sketch series There’s a Lot of It About, this diplomatically paved the way for Lotterby to work on the seventh series of Last of the Summer Wine, screened in 1983. But Bell was then back for two Christmas specials and all future episodes, stamping his mark on what became the world’s longest-running sitcom, which eventually finished in 2010 after 31 series.
He soon dropped all the studio scenes filmed at BBC Television Centre in London, in order to shoot entirely on location. He also expanded the cast of supporting actors as the programme increased in frequency in the late 1980s to one series every year. Jean Fergusson, Juliette Kaplan, Sarah Thomas, Thora Hird, Dora Bryan, Jean Alexander and June Whitfield were among the female actors who joined over the years – adding to the formidable Kathy Staff (Nora Batty) and Jane Freeman (Ivy) – while the triumvirate of henpecked men at various times included Michael Aldridge, Frank Thornton, Keith Clifford, Russ Abbot, Burt Kwouk and Brian Murphy.
Bell also gave the nod to Owen’s request – shortly before the actor’s death in 1999 – to amend a script so that Nora Batty would finally kiss Compo. When the sitcom was brought to an end after the 2010 series, he was deeply hurt and annoyed that a farewell edition could not be made.
Bell’s other great television success lay in bringing to the screen in 1981 Douglas Adams’s sci-fi satire The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, first made for radio three years earlier. He was not actually a fan of sci-fi, but said in 2016: “I tried to be as original as possible and nobody could fault it on that. It was done with a lot of enthusiasm.” The production won a Royal Television Society award as most original programme, and three Bafta awards for its visuals and sound, but an expected second series was not forthcoming, according to Bell, because Adams insisted that it would have to be made by the producer of the radio series.
Born in London, Alan was the son of Agnes (nee Johnston), a dressmaker, and James Bell, a London Electricity Board cashier. He attended Selhurst grammar school, Croydon, then, following the family’s move to Scotland, Buckhaven high school, Fife.
However, he hated school, often skipped lessons and wanted to get out into the world. His first job was as a projectionist at the Troxy cinema in Leven.
He joined the BBC as a film editor at Ealing Studios in 1958 before moving to Television Centre, where he was a production assistant and assistant floor manager. He started using his middle initials to avoid confusion with another producer-director called Alan Bell.
In 1979 he shot episodes of the Michael Palin comedy series Ripping Yarns entirely on location, on film that was then shown to a live studio audience to capture their reaction, which Bell described as “less than responsive”. But that did not stop him implementing the same process for Last of the Summer Wine, this time with better results, as he ingeniously used Owen, Staff and other cast members as warmup artists before the screening.
Bell also produced and directed the BBC sitcoms The Hello Goodbye Man (1984), starring Ian Lavender as a hapless sales rep, and Wyatt’s Watchdogs (1988), which featured Wilde and another Summer Wine actor, Trevor Bannister, as neighbourhood watch group leaders.
Later, for ITV, he directed the writer Deric Longden’s poignant, autobiographical feature-length drama Lost for Words (1999), with Pete Postlethwaite as Longden and Hird portraying his eccentric mother’s slide into dementia. It won an International Emmy award.
In retirement, Bell wrote the books Last of the Summer Wine: From the Director’s Chair (2012) and A Hitch in the Galaxy (2016).
He is survived by his wife, Constance (also nee Bell), who acted under the name Constance Carling and whom he married in 1970, their daughter, Cheraine, and his sister, Erika.
• Alan James William Bell, producer and director, born 14 November 1937; died 19 October 2023
