Sir David Jason has urged TV bosses to commission more family friendly shows.
David Jason
The 80-year-old actor is a national treasure in the UK due to his roles in several beloved shows such as 'Only Fools and Horses', 'Open All Hours' and 'The Darling Buds of May' and he insists the schedules need more of those stories as the type of programming that can often be seen on screen does not bring families together in the way that television used to do.
Writing in his new book, 'A Del of a Life', he said: “It’s just a fact of life that today’s programmes favour the hard-hitting, the callow, the angry. There’s an increasing harshness to things.
“Fashion and commercial pressures alike encourage the extreme. The tone is louder, more shouty.
“There’s less sense of television as an entertainment that we sometimes gather together for as families, and more sense of it as something consumed individually … it’s not the great unifier that it once was.”
David played Pop Larkin in 'The Darling Buds of May' - which was set in the 1950s and based on British writer H. E. Bates' novella of the same name - and the comedy-drama series, also starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, Pam Ferris and Philip Franks, proved to be a huge hit for ITV.
And the TV legend hopes the reports that the show is going to be rebooted with Bradley Walsh as Pop and Joanna Scanlan as Ma Larkin are true because it would be a much-needed addition to ITV's schedule.
He added: "That show we made was pure escapism at a time when people seemed to need it. And if people needed it then, my sense is that people need it even more now.”