| Life with the Lyons | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Sitcom |
| Starring | Bebe Daniels Ben Lyon Barbara Lyon Richard Lyon |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Language(s) | English |
| No. of series | 5 |
| No. of episodes | 40 |
| Production | |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Production company(s) | Associated-Rediffusion |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | BBC TV (series 1) ITV (from series 2) |
| Picture format | Black-and-white |
| Audio format | Monaural |
| Original run | 11 February 1955 – 1 May 1960 |
Life with The Lyons was a British radio and television domestic sitcom dating from the 1950s (broadcast 1955-1960).
Contents |
Life with The Lyons was unusual in that it featured a real-life American family. Ben Lyon and his wife Bebe Daniels settled in London during the Second World War and featured with the comedian Vic Oliver in the radio series Hi, Gang! that ran from 1940 to 1949. Life With the Lyons followed on from this and, together with Ben and Bebe, featured their children Richard and Barbara Lyon. Although scripted, it expanded on real-life events.
Writers on the series included Bob Block, who would later go on to create the BBC television series Rentaghost.
Molly Weir was their Scottish housekeeper Aggie Macdonald, Doris Rogers was the nosey neighbour Florrie Wainwright and Horace Percival played Mr Wimple. Two cinema films were produced and the show then transferred to BBC television. It later transferred to ITV.
A 1955 episode of the series was shown on BBC Four on 27 March 2005 as part of the "TV on Trial" season. The episode was not shown "in the clear" - viewers had the choice of a version without commentary but with several on-screen logos, or a version with commentary by Roy Hattersley and Kathryn Flett.
Many of the radio episodes were not kept by the BBC and as of 2011 only three episodes were known to exist in the archives; these were aired on BBC Radio 7 in early 2011. Following this broadcast, the BBC were alerted to a privately-held collection of over 200 episodes built up by Graeme Stevenson in Scotland, and a selection of these programmes are set to be rebroadcast on Radio 7's successor BBC Radio 4 Extra at a later date.[1]
Only 6 episodes of this 50's British sitcom survive within the Television archives (as most of the other episodes sadly no longer exist, as of November 2011).
1 from the frist series, 2 from the third and fourth each and 1 from the final series, making this a total of only 6 sole surviving episodes to date.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono paid tribute to the show in the naming of their second album, Unfinished Music No.2: Life with the Lions.