Development Prison was used as the fictitious H.M. Prison Slade in
Cumberland. The building is now a
register office.
Porridge originated with the BBC's 1973 project
Seven of One, which would see Ronnie Barker star in seven different
situation comedy pilot episodes. The most successful would then be made into a full series. One of the episodes was "
Prisoner and Escort", written by
Dick Clement and
Ian La Frenais about a newly sentenced habitual criminal,
Norman Stanley Fletcher (Barker), being escorted to prison by two warders: the timid Barrowclough (
Brian Wilde) and the stern Mackay (
Fulton Mackay). It was broadcast on 1 April 1973 on
BBC2. Despite Barker's initial preference for another of the pilots, a sitcom about a Welsh
gambling addict, "Prisoner and Escort", was selected. It was renamed
Porridge, a British slang term for a prison sentence from the 1950s; In their research, Clement and La Frenais spoke to Jonathan Marshall, a former prisoner who had written a book called
How to Survive in the Nick (
Allison and Busby, 1973), and he advised them about prison
slang, dress, and routines. Struggling to think up plots and humour for such a downbeat and confined environment, a particular phrase used by Marshall – "little victories" – struck a chord and convinced them to base the series on an inmate who made his daily life in prison more bearable by beating
the system, even in trivial ways. The BBC was forced to look around for locations because the
Home Office refused permission for any production filming inside or outside a real prison. Instead, the main gatehouse of the disused prison in Victoria Street,
St Albans, was used in the opening credits. Exteriors were first filmed at
Leavesden Hospital near
Watford. However, after the completion of the second series, the hospital withdrew permission for more filming following complaints from patients' families. Another institution near
Ealing was then used for the third series. Scenes within cells and offices were filmed at the BBC's London studios, but for shots of the wider prison interior, series production designer Tim Gleeson converted an old water tank, used at
Ealing Studios for underwater filming, into a multi-storey set. The first episode, "New Faces, Old Hands", was aired on BBC1 on 5 September 1974, attracting a television audience of more than 16 million, and receiving positive reviews from critics. Two further series were commissioned, as well as two
Christmas special episodes. The final episode of
Porridge, "Final Stretch", was broadcast on 25 March 1977. The producers and the writers were keen to make more episodes, but Barker was wary of being "stuck with a character" and also wanted to move on to other projects, so the series came to a close. Barker did, however, reprise his role as Fletcher in a sequel,
Going Straight, which ran for one series in 1978. A
feature-length version of the show was made in 1979, and in 2003 a follow-up
mockumentary entitled
Life Beyond the Box: Norman Stanley Fletcher was aired.
Locations The prison exterior in the title sequence is the old St Albans prison gatehouse and
HM Prison Maidstone, which was also featured in the BBC comedy series
Birds of a Feather (HMP Slade is referred to in
Birds of a Feather when the protagonists' husbands are imprisoned there after reoffending in Series 7). The interior shots of doors being locked were filmed in
Shepherd's Bush police station as the BBC had a good relationship with officers there. In the episode "Pardon Me", Fletcher speaks to Blanco (
David Jason) in the prison gardens: this was filmed in the grounds of an old brewery outside
Baldock on the
A505 to
Royston. The barred windows approximated a prison. The building has since been demolished. The 1974 episode "A Day Out", which features a prison work party, was filmed in and around the Welsh village of
Penderyn, the prisoners' ditch being excavated by a
JCB.
Loftus Road, the home of
Queens Park Rangers Football Club, was briefly featured in "Happy Release", standing in for
Elland Road in Leeds. In the episode "No Way Out", Fletcher tries to get MacKay to fall into a tunnel in the prison yard. These outside shots were filmed at
St Bernard's Hospital in West London, the barred windows in this case being those of the hospital pharmacy. The interior shots for the 1979 film were shot entirely at
HM Prison Chelmsford,
Essex.
Titles and music The opening credits consist of outside shots of Slade prison and of several doors and gates being closed and locked, which was intended to set the scene. In the first series, there were also shots of
St Pancras railway station, which was changed in subsequent series to shots of Fletcher walking around Slade prison. Title music was thought unsuitable for a show set in prison, so instead there is a booming narration (voiced by Barker himself) given by the presiding judge passing sentence on Fletcher: For series 1, the narration is "clean" (i.e. no effects) and plays in one complete piece. For series 2 and 3, it is broken down by sentence into three sections and has an echo effect added to increase the gravity of the "judge's" words, with each of the three sentences followed by shots of locking various doors around the "prison" with key locking sound effects. Subsequently, Barker is reported to have said that he regretted recording himself as the judge, a role subsequently played by
Maurice Denham in two episodes of the third series. The theme music for the closing credits was written by
Max Harris, who had also written the theme music for numerous other TV shows, including
The Strange World of Gurney Slade, The Gold Robbers and
Doomwatch, and would go on to arrange the theme for
Open All Hours (which was written by Joseph Ascher), another of the
Seven of One pilots. The cheery theme was "deliberately at variance with the dour comedy" and given a
music hall feel by Harris because of the lead character's
Cockney origins. ==Episodes==