10 Reasons Why Open All Hours Is Fantastically Funny

4. Best Laid Plans

Few things are funnier than seeing someone's cunning schemes thwarted. Arkwright is almost constantly trying it on with Nurse Gladys as their engagement never seems to get closer to culminating in holy matrimony.

Granville is often used by his uncle as a pawn in his attempts to lure her behind the counter. Gladys is not daft, however. She wants her prospective husband to spend more on updating household appliances, his own wardrobe and better transport for Granville. And what is Arkwright's natural reaction? To buy bargains €“ a van that leans with dodgy breaks, and a washing machine and spin dryer that race one another around the kitchen! When Arkright's plans don't involve opening his wallet he fares no better either. In attempts to serenade Gladys at her bedroom window, he falls off the ladder fearful that burglars have broken into the shop in one episode and climbs up to the wrong house in another. Arkwright is perhaps most funnily thwarted by his nephew's clumsiness in the third episode though. Having bought some new suede shoes Granville takes a tumble down the stairs. His uncle waits expectantly upstairs as the Nurse had promised to drop in. Last and by no means least in the backfiring plans stakes is the time when Arkwright places an advertisement in the local paper for a live-in housekeeper. Thinking nobody will apply for the post given the meagre salary he would pay and it would ensure Gladys decided to marry him, he is shocked when the formidable Mrs Delphine Featherstone declares her interest!