Following last week’s Hancock the final Lost Sitcom is another Galton and Simpson classic, which just goes to show how important these writers were in setting up the template for the successful modern sitcom. 

Once again the subtext is class as rag and bone business father and son fight it out, but Steptoe and Son, which originally ran from 1962 to 1965,  is still very different to Hancock. The other underlying theme here is Harold’s never-ending attempts to escape from his father Albert, which are always doomed to failure.

In A Winter’s Tale he has finally booked a solo holiday, skiing with the jet-set in Austria. After years of scrimping and scrounging he has cobbled together enough equipment on his rounds. The Alps beckon…

But, of course, things don’t go to plan. Despite the fact that one can see a few of the gags coming a mile off, this still stands up pretty well as a self-contained piece of two-handed theatre. Jeff Rawle is a bit too chubby as Albert and Ed Coleman is a bit too lean and young for Harold, but they do work well together. And I did like the way Rawle kept screwing up his face like an elderly Johnny Rotten.

The script does show its age in places, with jokes about indoor toilets and Hitchcock’s Psycho while a gag about “brown crumpet” is awkward on various levels. And given its clean-lined theatrical staging with the studio floor showing it is not quite as grimy or grubby as I remember the series. 

It is not quite as tragic as I recall either. Maybe you had to see middle-aged Harold trying to escape week after week only to have his dreams thwarted to appreciate the real pathos and pain of his predicament. Here the episode ends in a simple but effective conventional comedy pay-off. Not as timeless as last week’s Hancock, but better than the Alf Garnett, which felt like a real period piece.

Watch it on iPlayer here.