Both Ends Meet sitcom

Both Ends Meet / Dora

1972 - United Kingdom

Like most housewives, Dora (a widow with young son Ronnie to bring up), continually finds she has too much week left at the end of her money. 

In order to make more than she is earning in the sausage factory where she works, she turns to a catalogue company called Excelsior Trading. Not to purchase anything, but to become one of their agents. After all, with all the women working around her, she has a ready-made customer base. Or does she? It's a question of being accepted as an agent. But if she is, surely life's little luxuries will at last be winging her way. 

Both Ends Meet
Timothy Bateson and Dora Bryan

Veteran comedian Dora Bryan starred in this LWT sitcom as Dora Page, the strap-cashed Cannon's Family Sausages packer who was always at loggerheads with her boss Julian Cannon (Ivor Dean), and finding herself in desperate situations with the other female factor workers. Also starring was Wendy Richards. Both Ends Meet, by the way, is a reference to the sausages! 

Ronnie was played by David Howe in the first series, broadcast from February to April 1972, but when it returned for series two later that same year (September to November) he was replaced by Peter Vaughan Clarke. That wasn't the only change. The original title was dropped and changed to Dora.

Also see: According to Dora

Published on August 12th, 2019. Written by Laurence Marcus for Television Heaven.

Read Next...

Another Saturday Night and Sweet FA

Every weekend, long-suffering referee Mr. Armistead wades into the melee to try to teach two sets of testosterone-fuelled maniacs the value of restraint, justice and fair play.

Also released in 1972

Six of the Best

Six individual sitcoms that ITV hoped would produce a full series and do for them what 'Comedy Playhouse' did for the BBC.

Also starring Dora Bryan

The Army Game

Hugely successful series from Granada TV that started in 1957 as a fortnightly live sitcom, which was moved to a weekly spot when it became so popular. The series followed the misfortunes of a mixed bag of army conscripts.

Also tagged British Sitcom

After Henry

BAFTA-nominated comedy After Henry followed the comfortable middle-class lives of three women; except that, for one of them, life wasn't all that comfortable...

Also tagged British Sitcom

Get This! TV Series

Teenage magazine show

Also released in 1972

Dad's Army

"If the quality of the writing was a major factor in Dad's Army's resounding success, then that quality was more than matched by a cast which not so much interpreted the writing, as physically embodied it."

Also tagged British Sitcom

kung fu

US action-adventure drama in which a Shaolin monk who travels through the American Old West, armed only with his spiritual training and his skill in martial arts, goes in search of his half-brother.

Also released in 1972