User reviews

Another forgotten gem from the comedy archives. This was made in the un pc times when people just wanted to sit and have a giggle after a hard days work.The late great Joe Kinnear leads the cast of misfits who spend more time and effort trying to get out of work than they could actually spend working. Laughs galore here with situations adhered to in typical comedy script..Work Outings..tea drinking...the boss and his young secretary...all basic comedy prefixes. Colin Welland gives a great performance as the plumber who leads the trio of work shy socialists who scam their way through the working day rather than earn an honest pay packet. Debbie Linden, a name from my teenage dreams, plays the blonde secretary who spends all day touching up her nails and looking nice whilst trying to ignore the attentions of her overweight boss. One or two marvellous cameos here and there and sadly cancelled after just 3 series. At last available as a box set it stands the test of time and puts so called modern comedies in the shade.

"Cowboys" was a screamingly funny Thames Television sitcom that would need to be retitled if they ever show it in America. This series has nothing to do with Texas buckaroos. In Britain, a "cowboy builder" is an unscrupulous construction worker, specialising in construction jobs that look acceptable just long enough for the builders to get paid ... but which fall apart or develop problems after the builders have moved on to their next job.

Eric and Geyser and Wobbly Ron are the three cowboy builders who work for Joe Jones Ltd, the most unscrupulous building firm in the trade. Geyser is the plumber, and his nickname tells you how most of his plumbing jobs finish up. Joe Jones (played by the brilliant comic actor Roy Kinnear) doesn't much care about the shoddy work his builders are doing, because Joe is too busy trying to get into the sack with his sexy secretary Doreen ... who doesn't want any from Joe, thanks. (Actress Debbie Linden left this series early, leaving Joe with nobody to chase.)

Actor Colin Welland, who played the "oop North" plumber Geyser, is also a screenwriter and documentary filmmaker. During the run of "Cowboys", Welland won an Oscar for his screenplay for "Chariots of Fire" ... surely the only time in history that a sitcom actor took home an Academy Award for writing the script of a serious film.

"Cowboys" was well-written and well-performed, and would probably get a favourable reception in the United States ... providing somebody changes the title.

This isn't really 3 series - they showed the first 10 episodes in 1980 with a 3-week break about half way, then they aired only 2 more episodes the following December (Iots of rethinking going on perhaps- I suspect they may have made all 12 together).

My memory is the cast here (Welland, Kinnear etc) were so much better than this kind of thing. It has stuck in my mind though, all these years.

PS. I don't remember the characters being "socialists" (from the other review here) - I hope that word wasn't used to explain their work-shy nature! Colin Welland would not be happy with such a comparison!