Life with the Lyons

For the film version, see Life with The Lyons (film).

Life with the Lyons
Genre	Sitcom
Starring	Bebe Daniels Ben Lyon Barbara Lyon Richard Lyon
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language	English
No. of series	5
No. of episodes	40
Production
Running time	30 minutes
Production company	Associated-Rediffusion
Original release
Network	BBC TV (series 1) ITV (from series 2)
Release	11 February 1955 (1955-02-11) – 1 May 1960 (1960-05-01)

Life with The Lyons is a British radio and television domestic sitcom dating from the 1950s (broadcast 1950-1961 on radio, 1955-1960 on television).

Overview

Life with The Lyons is 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 feature 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 nosy 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 were rebroadcast on Radio 7's successor BBC Radio 4 Extra between July and December 2011.

Missing TV episodes

Only 6 episodes of this 1950s British sitcom survive within the Television archives (as most of the other episodes sadly no longer exist, as of November 2011).

One from the first series, two from the third and fourth each and one from the final series, making this a total of only six sole surviving episodes to date.

In popular culture

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. Also, in his song “Post World War Two Blues” (Past, Present & Future, 1973), Al Stewart sang, “We were locked up safe and warm from the snow / With ‘Life with the Lyons’ on the radio . . .”

In an episode of the radio comedy series, 'the Goon Show', Life with the Lyons' was mocked as the worst thing on British Television

External links

• Life with the Lyons at IMDb
• Radio shows [1]