The quintessential quickfire stand-up comedy show, The Comedians is one of the great successes of ITV - lasting from 1971 until 1993 and making household names of many of its stars. With routines that were honed to perfection in the hard-knock territory of Northern working men’s clubs, Frank Carson, Charlie Williams, Bernard Manning, George Roper, Mike Reid and Ken Goodwin all became masters of the excruciatingly bad joke and the knowing wink.