Terry and June is a BBC television sitcom, which was broadcast on BBC1 from 1979 to 1987. The show was largely a reworking of Happy Ever After, and starred Terry Scott and June Whitfield as a middle-aged, middle-class suburban couple, Terry and June Medford, who live in Purley. Most of the 65 episodes were written by John Kane, with seven other writers also contributing some episodes. The theme tune, Bell Hop by John Shakespeare, was also used for the radio series Never Too Late which starred Dame Thora Hird and Joe Gladwin and ran for two series (1981 and 1982). Production Terry Scott and June Whitfield began their television partnership in Scott On in 1968. On 7 May 1974, a Comedy Playhouse pilot called "Happy Ever After" aired on BBC1 with Scott and Whitfield playing Terry and June Fletcher, a middle-class couple whose grown-up children have just left home. This was commissioned into a series of the same name, and five series and two Christmas specials were broadcast, ending on 25 April 1979. John T. Chapman, one of the original writers, said that the programme had run out of ideas and had to come to an end. BBC Comedy, however, were unwilling to end a popular show, and so brought in fresh new writers. Legal complications meant that the name and setting had to change, and so on 24 October 1979, Terry and June was born. The characteristics of Terry and June remained largely similar. However, the character of Aunt Lucy and her mynah bird, a popular ingredient of Happy Ever After, were dropped. The character of Melinda Spry, Terry and June's neighbour, was originally played by Joan Benham in the 1981 episode "The Lawnmower". Benham died on 13 June 1981, and Terry and June was her last television appearance. She was replaced by Diana King. The BBC planned a feature-length film, entitled Terry and June – The Movie, but it was never made. Despite being seen as "cosy" and somewhat "dated" even upon its original broadcast, and lampooned by contemporaneous alternative comedy programmes, the show nevertheless attracted large viewing figures. The series never came to an 'official' end, with Series Nine in 1987 not planned to be the last, but, according to main writer John Kane, the series "just sort of petered out in the end", after Series 8 (1985) already having been "buried in an early tea-time slot",