4) Ken Jones as Uncle Bernard (series 5) Noreen Kershaw as Joyce Wilson (series 5 onwards) Andrew Hilton as Gerald Wilson (series 5 onwards) Elizabeth Morton as Lucinda Davis/Stoneway (series 5–7) Richard Good as Jonathan MacMillan (series 6) Ally Vuli as Roz (series 7) Jonathan Hackett as Julian (series 7) Al T. Kossy as Harold Dave Dutton as Oswald Parkins (series 1–5) Bill Moores as "Cedric", regular at the Grapes Anita Petrof as "Mary", regular at the Grapes Note: "Cedric" and "Mary" are the names given to the characters by Brenda during her people-watching days, Cedric's "real" name is unknown, but in series one episode "Repenting" Brenda reveals that she has talked to her and that "Mary"'s real name is Freda. Production Watching was originally conceived as a comedy sketch about a shy birdwatcher and a lively girl, written by Hitchmough during a drama workshop at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool. He submitted the sketch for the BBC satirical series Not the Nine O'Clock News but it was rejected. Undeterred by this, Hitchmough developed the sketch into a stage play, adapted into an afternoon play for BBC Radio 4. Later, Watching won a commission from Granada Television to produce a seven-part series for broadcast on Sunday nights at 10pm, which was a timeslot that was usually reserved for satirical comedy such as Yorkshire Television's The New Statesman and Central's Spitting Image. After a successful first series and subsequent Christmas special, Watching was recommissioned and moved to an earlier timeslot of 8pm on Friday nights. Up until the end of the final run (broadcast at 7pm on Sunday), the series would have audiences of over 13 million viewers. Originally, the series was produced by David Liddiment (later to become Director of Programming at ITV) and directed by Les Chatfield, a senior director at Granada. Chatfield directed most of the episodes and took over producing duties from series 3 onwards. Liddiment became the series' executive producer. Emma Wray sang both the opening and closing versions of the theme song, What Does He See in Me?, which was written by Charles Hart. Incidental music was written and composed by Richie Close. Books A novel based on the first series of Watching and written by Jim Hitchmough was published in 1990 by Bantam Books. Home releases A video featuring the first two episodes, "Meeting" and "Wrestling", was released by CastleVision in August 1993. All