40 years of comedy classic Auf Wiedersehen, Pet: ‘The producers thought it was too crude, too manly’

Sat, 27 Apr 2024

It’s four decades since the comedy drama detailing the exploits of British migrant workers in Germany burst on to our screens. As they stage a live show, its writers and stars let us in on how they constructed a classic

In November 1983, a new television series that focused on working-class labourers debuted on ITV. Auf Wiedersehen, Pet told the story of seven men who felt it necessary to leave their families and Thatcher’s Britain in order to earn a living wage. Dennis Patterson (Tim Healy), Neville Hope (Kevin Whately), Leonard “Oz” Osborne (Jimmy Nail), Barry Taylor (Timothy Spall), Wayne Norris (Gary Holton), Albert Moxey (Christopher Fairbank) and Brian “Bomber” Busbridge (Pat Roach) were, between them, brickies, electricians and carpenters who lived and worked together on a construction site in Düsseldorf, Germany, where they bonded, pined for home and drank away their sorrows. Mostly written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, and performed by a cast of young actors, it proved an immediate hit, and helped launch its leads, who went on to careers in film, theatre and music.

The show immediately hit a collective nerve. Like Alan Bleasdale’s Boys from the Black Stuff the previous year – which covered similar themes of high unemployment and the spectre of a bleak future – Auf Wiedersehen, Pet also managed to be funny. It quickly gained weekly audience figures of around 14 million. It has perhaps gone on to endure so well because, by focusing on the complicated business of male friendship with the suggestion that beneath all the bluff and the bravado their love for one another ran deep, it was ahead of its time.