While Bill Owen and Peter Sallis reprised their roles as Compo and Clegg, Brian Wilde chose not to take part because of personal differences with Owen.

The first, simply titled Last of the Summer Wine, [112] was released in 2003 and includes early episodes from the 1970s and 1980s.

The first act built up to the appearance of Marina ( Jean Fergusson), who was in correspondence with Howard. The show used actual businesses and homes in and around Holmfirth, and Nora Batty's house, which is actually a Summer Wine themed holiday cottage where members of the public can stay in a replica of Nora Batty's home. Howard has a problem too: he's got a present to give to Pearl, and keep from Marina, all at the same time.

W. Bell, it featured interviews with the majority of cast and crew members, outtakes from the show, and a behind-the-scenes look at production.

Subsequently, every episode from the third to the twenty-seventh series has been released on DVD in Vintage collections, many including special features and interviews. The BBC initially disliked Hazlehurst's theme, feeling it was not proper for a comedy programme to have such mellow music. Sallis was reluctant to appear in the new production, and his role in the show was rewritten and played by Derek Fowlds. With nearly 12,000votes in the survey, the show received one-third of the total vote, and twice as many votes as the runner up in the poll, Heartbeat. Despite numerous cast and production changes over the years, Last of the Summer Wine continued to be popular with viewers and was renewed year after year despite reports to the contrary.

A 2008 release named Last of the Summer Wine: Vintage 1976 focuses on the third series of the show and includes bonus interviews with Peter Sallis, Brian Wilde, and Frank Thornton. When Bates dropped out due to illness in 1976 after two series, the role of the third man of the trio was filled in various years up to the 30th series by the quirky war veteran Walter C " Foggy" Dewhurst ( Brian Wilde) (who had two lengthy stints), the eccentric inventor and ex-headmaster Seymour Utterthwaite ( Michael Aldridge), and former police officer Herbert "Truly of The Yard" Truelove ( Frank Thornton). The BBC wanted to cancel Last of the Summer Wine for years in favour of a new programme aimed at a younger audience, but the show remained too popular for cancellation; even repeats received ratings of as much as five million viewers per episode. The trio explored the world around them, experiencing a second childhood with no wives, jobs, or responsibilities. In the early 1980s, a daily comic strip based on the show was drawn by Roger Mahoney and appeared in the Daily Star.

Although this has helped the Holmfirth economy and made it a tourist destination, tensions have occasionally surfaced between Holmfirth residents and the crew. The second collection, titled Last of the Summer Wine: Vintage 1995, followed in 2004 and includes episodes from series seventeen and the 30th anniversary documentary. I'm hoping that as one by one we drop dead that, provided Roy is still alive, it will just keep going. The biggest expansion came in 1985 when four characters from the stage adaptation of the show were brought over to the series proper: Howard ( Robert Fyfe), Pearl ( Juliette Kaplan), Marina ( Jean Fergusson), and Ivy's nephew, "Crusher" Milburn ( Jonathan Linsley).

Join Compo Simmonite Bill Owen, Norman Clegg Peter Sallis, Cyril Blamire Michael Bates and Foggy Dewhurst (Brian Wilde), four retirees in a quaint and picturesque Yorkshire village, getting on in years, who have nothing to bide their time aside from dreaming up outrageous schemes and trading weathered philosophical musings, in LAST OF THE SUMMER WINE, the longest running sitcom in the world, which debuted on the BBC in the early seventies and has endured for over three decades, retaining tremendous popularity despite constant upheavals and shifts in its cast from season to season.

The 1983 film, Getting Sam Home, used those two verses, with an additional two and played them over the opening credits. The book was written by Morris Bright and Robert Ross and chronicled the show from its inception through the end of the 2000 series.