The Gary Webster Years
Has any channel shown them/ will be showing them or have they not been repeated since they were first aired?
Paramount Comedy gave them quite a big showing and I recall Men and Motors also showed them a couple of times. It does not look like ITV 4 will be showing them in the near future though.
"The World is Your Lobster My Son!"-Arthur Daley, Minder.
all 10 seasons and the remake wiil be releast on dvd on the 16 3- 2009
hope this helps
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your best bet is email
[email protected]
they will be able to help you more
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I've been watching them on ITV4 and I'm wonderin how does it develop.
IMO it was great casting getting Gary Webster as Ray Daley and I like the relationship between Ray and Uncle Arthur.
But I don't think he gets as much airtime/storylines as he perhaps should, does this change in later series?
Although I like Ray I've found most of his episodes so far (upto episode 8) as a whole pretty weak, Arthur at times descending into characture(i.e.'The Last Temptation of Daley' and 'A Bird in the Hand is Worth Two in Shepherd's Bush')
The best episode so far I've seen in the Ray years is 'Him Indoors' laughed all the way through it.
How do things develop as the episodes/series go on?
Webster's performance grew and grew in terms of the actor's confidence and ease on screen. Early on the character of Ray was deliberately shown to be young and occasionally naive: bright but lacking a ruthless streak, a lad easily exploited by his uncle. Ray becomes tougher, savvier and more streetwise as he goes into series nine and ten.
It's good that the Ray Daley episodes are getting an airing again, but unfortunately ITV4 will be making a lot of cuts to them for violence (as they did to most of the early Waterman episodes). The series nine episode 'Opportunity Knocks and Bruises' features Ray in a savage fist fight in a toilet with a dirty fighting Irish hard man. The scene is every bit as tough and nasty as anything from the notoriously violent early days.
ITV4 are bound to cut this scene to pieces. Same with the fight in series ten's ' 'All Quiet on the West End Front', a scene that's easily the most brutal and bloody in all of Minder's history. If you're watching these for the first time on ITV4 then it's a shame that you won't be getting these scenes uncut. The tougher moments provide a counter-balance to the humour that was sometimes in danger of taking over the whole series at the expense of grittier drama. They also (in uncut form) prove that the Ray Daley era was a lot tougher and harder than people remember it to have been. A real step up from the lazy and flabby silliness of Waterman's final series.