The Liver Birds

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The Liver Birds
Genre	Sitcom
Created by	Carla Lane Myra Taylor
Starring	Polly James Pauline Collins Nerys Hughes Elizabeth Estensen
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Language(s)	English
No. of series	10
No. of episodes	86
Production
Running time	30 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	BBC1
Original run	Original Series: 14 April 1969 – 5 January 1979 Revival Series: 6 May – 24 June 1996
External links
IMDb profile

The Liver Birds is a British sitcom that aired on BBC1 from 1969 to 1979 and in 1996. It was created by Carla Lane and Myra Taylor. Lane wrote most of the episodes; Taylor wrote only the very early ones.

The series charted the ups and downs of two "dolly birds" sharing a flat on Huskisson Street, on Merseyside. The series concentrated on the problems encountered by the two young single women when dealing with boyfriends, work, parents and each other. Dressed in the best 1970s fashions, they desperately trawled parties, looking for romance, in a loose female equivalent of The Likely Lads.

The pilot and Series 1 starred Dawn (Pauline Collins) and Beryl Hennessey (Polly James). In Series 2, Sandra Hutchinson (Nerys Hughes) replaced Dawn for the rest of the programme's run. The Beryl and Sandra pairing is generally regarded as the programme's heyday. Beryl was the more common one, while Sandra was soft-spoken and refined. This was mainly due to the influence of her snobbish and overbearing mother played by Mollie Sugden. Carol Boswell (Elizabeth Estensen) replaced Beryl from Series 5 onwards.

The title originated in the name given to two sculpted birds perched atop the Royal Liver Building at Pier Head in the city of Liverpool. The title song for the series was sung by The Scaffold. The group included Mike McCartney (brother of Paul) and the poet Roger McGough.

[edit] Revival

In 1996, 17 years after the final episode of the show broadcast the BBC revived the series, with Beryl and Sandra now both coping with the aftermath of their respective failed marriages. (This may have been inspired by the success of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?). As the BBC's own website admits, some liberties were taken with continuity: Carmel McSharry who had played Carol's mother in Seasons 5–9, returned as the same character but now transformed into Beryl's mother, and Carol's rabbit-obsessed brother Lucien, played by Michael Angelis, became Beryl's brother. The revival was not a success: it only lasted one series, and is not, at present, available on DVD.