 In 1972 , Duncan Wood , the BBC 's Head of Comedy , watched a comedy on television called The Misfit . Impressed by writer Roy Clarke 's ability to inject both comedy and drama into the sitcom , Wood offered Clarke the opportunity to write a sitcom . Clarke nearly turned the job down as he felt that the BBC 's idea for a programme about three old men was a dull concept for a half @-@ hour sitcom . Instead , Clarke proposed that the men should all be unmarried , widowed , or divorced and either unemployed or retired , leaving them free to roam around like adolescents in the prime of their lives , unfettered and uninhibited . 
