The Liver Birds
What's got four legs, walks peculiar?
Talks with all the choicest words?
What's got four arms, loves to grab ya?
Answer is two Liver birds
 The
Liver Birds - the key word rhymes with "saliva" - was the
distaff answer to The Likely Lads charting the exploits of
two oestrogen-charged dolly-birds with more loon pants than sense,
sharing a flat on Huskisson Street, and hell bent on pulling all
the "gear" guys on Merseyside.
The city was still, just, exuding a certain glamour from the
boom period that followed the success of The Beatles and other pop
groups earlier in the 1960s (indeed the series' theme song was
sung by The Scaffold, a pop/poetry trio that included Paul
McCartney's brother, Mike).
The series' title originated in the
name given to two sculpted birds perched atop the Royal Liver
Building at the city's Pier Head.
Originally the two 'liver birds' were Dawn (Pauline Collins)
and Beryl (Polly James), but after five episodes Dawn moved on
(or, rather, moved out) and was replaced by Sandra (Nerys Hughes),
a pairing that resulted in the series' most popular period.
At the end of the fourth series James left the cast (Beryl got
married) and she was replaced by Carol (Elizabeth Estensen) who
stayed throughout the remaining 1970s episodes.
Launched as a Comedy Playhouse pilot, The Liver Birds
was the creation of first-time writers Carla Lane and Myra Taylor,
Liverpool housewives who loosely based the characters and
storylines upon their own experiences.
The BBC initially teamed
them with veteran writer Lew Schwarz, whose mission was to explain
sitcom-writing technique, and then employed Eric Idle as script
editor, but from the third series the women were left alone;
Taylor then departed soon after and Lane took sole charge of the
writing.
The episodes concentrated on the relationship between the two
lead players as they went about their everyday life, dealing with
boyfriends, jobs, parents, lack of money and the quest for a more
comfortable standard of living.
This was a breakthrough period for young, single women
following centuries of repression - they had independence, both
sexual and financial, and the opportunity to live life as they
wanted it, and Carla Lane's scripts reflected this admirably, as
well as sketching the uncertainties and philosophies of being
single when everyone else seemed to be married.
The Liver Birds was only the start of Lane's remarkable sitcom
career but her ability to conjure laughs out of pathos and, as she
called them, 'little tragedies', was apparent even here.
During its heyday, with Beryl and Sandra, there was a robust
energy about the desperation in which the girls went to parties,
trawled for 'talent' and threw themselves into
relationships.
Beryl was the more common one, spontaneous, scatty and with a
voice so staggeringly piercing that you could hear it on the other
channel; Sandra was quieter, more cautious, optimistic and
refined, mainly thanks to the influence of her snobbish and
overbearing mother (played in exaggerated music-hall style by
Mollie Sugden).
In hindsight, however, the series seems to have made as much
impression for its reflections of fashion trends as for its
humour, the young women wearing everything from caftans,
maxi-coats and mini-skirts to trouser-suits, hot-pants and
platform shoes. Carol, who replaced Beryl, dressed particularly
loudly.
The arrival of scatty Carol was also used to introduce a wider
circle of characters, including her larger-than-life Catholic
parents and rabbit-obsessed brother Lucien. (Their family name,
Boswell, reappeared in Carla Lane's 1980s series Bread
)
The Liver Birds continued much as before until the
eighth series, when the women worked as kennel maids and Sandra
became romantically involved with a vet, Derek Paynton. They
eventually married, and Derek narrowly avoided having to move to
Africa to study wildlife.
 In
the ninth series Sandra fell pregnant and Carol returned to live
with her parents, but after the Boswells were evicted from their
home she moved in with Sandra and her husband.
That should have been the end of it, for by this time the
format had moved far away from the concept of two wacky young
women sharing a flat, and with the greater emphasis on the fringe
characters and Carol's family, The Liver Birds was moving
closer to the area that Carla Lane would explore in the
extended-family sitcom Bread.
Although fondly remembered, the series did not age well and
(apart from screenings on cable/satellite nostalgia channels) has
never enjoyed the mainstream re-run appeal of, say, Dad's Army
or Are You Being Served?
But in the 1990s, following the US trend of resurrecting old
sitcoms, the BBC recommissioned three former hits for a new
generation of viewers: the Doctor series (Doctor At The
Top) , Reginald Perrin (The Legacy Of Reginald Perrin)
and The Liver Birds.
Back came Polly James and Nerys Hughes from the show's golden
period, playing their characters nearly 20 years on.
There was some liberty taken with continuity (Lucien, who had
been Carol's brother, was now Beryl's brother; and Carmen McSharry,
who had played Carol's mother Mrs Boswell, now appeared as Beryl's
mother Mrs Hennessey) but the two lead characters were believable
developments of their earlier selves: wiser, sadder, perhaps even
more desperate - but both bouncing back from failed relationships
and marriages to throw themselves into the maelstrom of
middle-aged single life.
The new series was not a great success, however - while the
public might nostalgically reminisce about old television
comedies, it rarely takes to updated revivals.
TRIVIA NOTE
Nerys Hughes and Polly James appeared in The Last Waltz,
a specially scripted celebration that brought together the key
characters from four Carla Lane series - The Liver Birds, Bread,
Solo and Butterflies - screened by BBC1 on 10 March
1989 as part of Comic Relief.
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