Ian La Frenais ranks among British television's most accomplished comedy writers. Most of his greatest successes were collaborations with BBC writer­ producer Dick Clement; with Clement he contributed several of the most enduringly popular comedy series of the late 20th century.

     La Frenais's early experience as an insurance salesman in his native Newcastle-upon-Tyne was to prove invaluable when he came to write the first of the classic comedy series that he created in partnership with Clement. He happened to meet Clement while on holi­ day, and they devised a sketch about two cocky northern lads for Clement's director's exams. The BBC was much impressed by the scenario, and their sketch was developed into the massive hit The Likely Lads, which was one of the fledgling BBC 2's first big successes. The series revolved around the squabbles and contrasting aspirations of two friends, Bob Ferris (Rodney Bewes) and Terry Collier (James Bolam). La Frenais's writing showed facility with characterization and an easy grasp of northern traits and humor, as well as a certain acuteness in exposing the absurdities of the British class system in a rapidly changing world. Sequels all too often turn out to lack the flair and uniqueness of originals. In this case, however, when the series was revived some years later as Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?, with Bob now engaged to be married and an even more vituperative Terry newly released from the army, the critics were unanimous in finding the humor even sharper and more effective. There was no critical dissent when the program was voted Best Situation Comedy of the Year in 1973.

     Clement and La Frenais returned to the humor of northeast England at regular intervals over the years, notably in the extraordinarily successful series Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, about a gang of Geordie building laborers obliged to pursue their trade in Germany, and in Spender, which starred former Auf Wiedersehen brick-layer Jimmy Nail. However, the pair proved that they were by no means restricted to purely regional comedy drama, and in the mid-1970s they scored another huge hit with the classic prison comedy Porridge, starring the multifaceted comedian Ronnie Barker.

     Barker's cockney Norman Stanley Fletcher, a habitual criminal obliged by his innate good nature to guide his young cellmate Godber (Richard  Beckinsale)through the vicissitudes and dangers of life behind bars, was hailed as a masterpiece of comic invention, and the program became a favorite of prison audiences throughout the country. A sequel, Going Straight, which followed Fletcher's life after his release was less successful, lacking the dramatic tension that came with the confines of the original setting. In some respects, Clement and La Frenais had already had a dry run for Porridge in their series Thick As Thieves, in which two crooks (Bob Hoskins and John Thaw) competed for the love of the same woman. This series ended after just eight episodes, when Thaw began work on The Sweeney police series. The original plan had been to return the two central characters to prison, where their relationship would have to adjust to new circumstances.

     Collaborative efforts on situation comedies in the 1990s-including the disappointing Full Stretch, about a luxury car-hire business-have proved less no­ table. With Clement, however, La Frenais enjoyed significant success as a screenwriter with his script for the cult film The Commitments (a triumph that prompted the pair to attempt a television version under the title Over the Rainbow). In the 1990s, La Frenais's solo contributions as writer were more successful, with the popular Lovejoy series, adaptations for television of the Jonathan Gash novels about an antiques dealer with an eye for the main chance (and for the ladies). As before, La Frenais's easy humor and skillful characterization were deemed essential to the show's success.