In the 1970s there it was fashionable to adopt British television sitcoms into feature length films. Dads Army, Man about the House, Are you being served, Steptoe & Son as well as others appeared in the cinemas with varying success.

The Likely Lads is regarded as one of the better film adaptations of a sitcom. I hate to see the worse ones as this one really is pants with actually no story-line.

Terry (James Bolam) is working class, divorced and prone to be a layabout. His childhood friend Bob (Rodney Bewes) is happily married and has middle class aspirations.

Both live in a Newcastle undergoing rapid change in the 1970s which is noted in the titles of the BBC series Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads, the sequel to the original series of the sitcom The Likely Lads.

The plot seems to be Terry has a new Finnish girlfriend and along with Bob and Thelma they go on a caravanning holiday. The duo pick up a few dolly birds, lose their spouses and end up in the doghouse. They stay at a guest-house as they have no homes to go and as you did in the 1970s, Terry chats up the landlady and dull Bob chats up her nubile daughter.

I almost laughed once. It was worth seeing for scenes of the north east in the 1970s which is the only recommendation.

Terry is not a natural Bridge player.Arguably the funniest line in "The likely lads" is spoken by Thelma his despairing partner when he leaves the caravan and all too audibly begins to urinate against the side. Apart from that it's pretty desperate stuff.Mr James Bolam's lovable Geordie rogue schtick gets a bit wearing and Mr Rodney Bewes irritates no end as the whingeing social aspirant. This is a man with a Vauxhall Cavalier.....need I say more? These two make Ant and Dec seem like Fry and Laurie. Miss Brigid Forsyth plays Bob's wife Thelma , a woman of such thin-lipped ferocity as to render Bill Clinton impotent yet we are asked to believe that her husband,a man with all the charisma of a dried up tin of paint,would try to bed any woman who retains eye contact with him for more than 3 seconds. Miss Mary Tamm plays Christina,Terry's girl-friend who presumably sees behind the surface superficiality to the real superficiality underneath. She looks remarkably like the beautiful and talented Miss Sylvia Sims. Unfortunately that's as far as the resemblance goes. There is a scene where Terry unknowingly gets into bed with Bob,a scene where our heroes run around minus their trousers.So "The likely lads "is clearly aimed at a fairly sophisticated audience . Mr Alun Armstrong plays the milkman and his scenes with Mr James Bolam are thought-provoking for the more philosophical amongst us who see them doing more or less the same double act 30 years down the line in "New Tricks".

Putting aside the fact that this film is dissimilar in many ways to the great TV sitcom 'Whatever happened to...', this is my favourite TV sitcom spin-off. There's not really enough plot to fill the time and it is very episodic, and it is a little cruder than the TV version too. However, we still have Bob unsure about being tied down to Thelma and a dull suburban life and of course we still have lifelong friend Terry who is rather common but has a much more free existence and does many things that Bob now feels unable to. I think my liking for the film is down to personal reasons - I was a young man in 1976, about to get married and lived the 1970's life, much more open and less regulated than we are now. Gosh, I even drove a Chevette at the time! When I see the Lads out together, knocking about the countryside or in the pub I get all misty, and I think it must be this nostalgia that makes me love this film so much. The keyboard/synth music is pretty cheesy, but it suits the film and its period so well. Next time you see this film, forget the (better) TV series and enjoy it for what it is.