Granville (Open All Hours)

Granville is a fictional character played by David Jason in the British sitcom Open All Hours and its sequel, Still Open All Hours. Granville is an errand boy to his uncle and employer, Arkwright, who is the proprietor of an old-fashioned Yorkshire corner shop.

Granville was born to Arkwright's sister, who died while Granville was a young child, leaving Arkwright as his sole guardian. Granville's father's identity is not known, as his mother is implied to be a woman of loose morals, and Arkwright considers him to have likely been a Hungarian. Raised alone by Arkwright, Granville is often curious and engrossed in thoughts about who his father was and saddened not to have known his mother.

Although a kind provider (as long as it isn't too stressful on his wallet), Arkwright's miserly and eccentric personality makes him withdraw Granville from school and he starts helping in his uncle's shop at age eleven. The tedious routine weighs heavily on Granville, who hates getting up well before dawn in the morning and not being free until nine at night. He is poorly paid, at three pounds a week, and is made to pay for anything he helps himself to from the shop shelves, even if Arkwright gave it to him. He is curious and anxious to explore the outside world and mingle with his peers, especially girls. Granville spends most of the day dreaming of being somewhere else, or doing something else, a custom which is seen as alien in the working class Yorkshire environment. Granville seems fairly sharp and quick witted, and is often quick to make satirical jokes about Arkwright's stammer or mannerisms whilst he will often flippantly make fun at customers to their faces, all of them seemingly being too unintelligent to realise this.

Unlike his uncle who is a practical man (and a miser), Granville is a carefree man, yet is treated as if he is still a child. Granville's mundane existence is only brightened up by the milkwoman (Barbara Flynn), the only person other than Arkwright who is awake at the same time as him in the mornings. Despite his attraction to her, she is more worldly wise than he is and likes men of the same calibre as herself, but she is generally sympathetic towards Granville, and they have kissed on several occasions.

By the time of Still Open All Hours, Arkwright has long died and Granville has inherited the shop as promised by Arkwright, and has a young son, Leroy. Despite their radically different personalities and views on life, however, Granville has become much like Arkwright in his old age, such as light-heartedly mocking Leroy over his mother's identity, and attempting to make money out of every customer who walks into the shop, even by telling fibs about certain items such as anchovy paste. At one point, Granville opens a bottle of whisky to pour a drink for a promoter, and then charges him for the whole bottle. As a tribute, Granville keeps a framed photograph of Arkwright in the kitchen. He occasionally speaks to the photo as if speaking to Arkwright, and continues to mock his late uncle's stutter as a joke.

References

• Open All Hours at the bbc.co.uk Guide to Comedy
• Open All Hours at the British Film Institute
• Granville at the BFI's Screenonline
• Open All Hours at the Internet Movie Database
• Image of Arkwright's shop in April 2007