Shelley is a British sitcom

British sitcom

A British sitcom tends, as it does in most other countries, to be based on a family, workplace or other institution, where the same group of contrasting characters is brought together in each episode. Unlike American sitcoms, where twenty or more episodes in a season is the norm, British sitcoms...

 made by Thames Television

Thames Television

Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992....

 and originally broadcast on ITV

ITV

ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...

 from 1979 to 1984 and from 1988 to 1992, with occasional hiatus

Hiatus (television)

In television scheduling, a hiatus refers to a break of at least several weeks in the normal schedule of a broadcast programming. It can occur during a season of a television program, or can be between television seasons .- Planned hiatus :Many times television stations will implement a hiatus...

es. Hywel Bennett

Hywel Bennett

Hywel Thomas Bennett is a Welsh film and television actor. Bennett is best known for his recurring title role as James Shelley in the television sitcom Shelley from 1979 to 1984 and its sequel The Return of Shelley from 1988 to 1992....

 starred as James Shelley, a sardonic, 28-year-old, anti-establishment

Anti-establishment

An anti-establishment view or belief is one which stands in opposition to the conventional social, political, and economic principles of a society. The term was first used in the modern sense in 1958, by the British magazine New Statesman to refer to its political and social agenda...

 postgraduate and career income tax

Income tax

An income tax is a tax levied on the income of individuals or businesses . Various income tax systems exist, with varying degrees of tax incidence. Income taxation can be progressive, proportional, or regressive. When the tax is levied on the income of companies, it is often called a corporate...

 dodger. Belinda Sinclair

Belinda Sinclair

Belinda Sinclair is a British actress widely known for several recurring television roles.She was born in London, trained as an actor with the Arts Educational Schools, London and had early success on the stage...

 played Shelley's girlfriend

Girlfriend

Girlfriend is a term that can refer to either a female partner in a non-marital romantic relationship or a female non-romantic friend that is closer than other friends....

 Frances, and Josephine Tewson

Josephine Tewson

Josephine Tewson is an English actress. Tewson is perhaps best known for her roles as Elizabeth in the British television series Keeping Up Appearances and as Miss Davenport in the British television series Last of the Summer Wine.-Early life:Tewson was born in Hampstead, London. Her father was a...

 appeared regularly as his Landlady, Edna Hawkins. The series was created by Peter Tilbury

Peter Tilbury

Peter Tilbury born 20 October 1945 in Redruth, Cornwall in England is a British actor and writer.As an actor Tilbury's television appearances include Dixon of Dock Green , It Takes a Worried Man , Miss Marple , Fortunes of War Casualty , The Bill , Birds of a Feather , and Chef! .As a television...

 who also wrote the first three series. Writing duties for subsequent episodes were handed over to Andy Hamilton

Andy Hamilton

Andrew Neil Hamilton is a British comedian, game show panellist, television director, comedy screenwriter and radio dramatist.-Early life:...

 and Guy Jenkin

Guy Jenkin

Guy Jenkin is a comedy writer who is best known for working on sitcoms and comedies such as Drop the Dead Donkey, Jeffrey Archer: The Truth and Outnumbered...

 (both of whom would later go on to write the hugely successful Drop the Dead Donkey

Drop the Dead Donkey

- Major characters :* Gus Hedges — The unctuous Chief Executive of the company, and yes-man to Sir Roysten Merchant. A management stereotype, complete with clichés and clumsy metaphors, he swiftly transforms GlobeLink from a serious news network to a ratings-chasing tabloid channel...

for Channel 4), with other episodes written by Barry Pilton

Barry Pilton

Barry Pilton is a travel writer, radio and television comedy scriptwriter and novelist. He was educated in Dulwich College and King's College London. In 1967-8 he taught English in Paris and from 1969 worked as a journalist on the Sunday Post, becoming a freelance writer in 1976...

, Colin Bostock-Smith, Bernard McKenna

Bernard McKenna

Bernard McKenna may refer to:*Bernard J. McKenna , Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania politician*Bernard McKenna , Scottish-born television comedy writer...

 and David Firth

David Firth

David Firth is an English animator, video artist, amateur filmmaker, and musician. As a cartoonist Firth's work is largely distributed via the Internet...

. All 71 episodes were produced and directed by Anthony Parker.

Series seven was titled on screen The Return of Shelley, again starring Hywel Bennett as James Shelley, and was broadcast in 1988. This time round, Shelley is (still) separated from Frances, and lives on his own, doing his best to avoid obtaining gainful employment. The series begins with Shelley returning to the UK from Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...

, where he had taught English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 for a few years, only to find that his calls to his old friends are now screened by answer phones and that yuppieness has taken root in his old neighbourhood. Subsequent series returned to the on-screen title of Shelley.

For the final two series, we see Shelley sharing a house with Ted Bishop played by David Ryall

David Ryall

David Ryall is an English actor who has appeared on British television since the 1970s. He has had leading roles in Lytton's Diary and Goodnight Sweetheart, as well as memorable roles in Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective and Andrew Davies's adaptation of To Play the King and The Final Cut, the...

. Ted's house is the only one left in his street, the other residences having been demolished to make way for a leisure centre. Shelley moves in as lodger to help Ted with his fight against the developers who want to demolish the house Ted has lived in his whole life.

Book

The first series was rewritten as a novel, Shelley, by Peter Tilbury and Colin Bostock-Smith (New English Library

New English Library

The New English Library was a United Kingdom book publishing company, which became an imprint of Hodder Headline.- History :New English Library was created in 1961 by the Times Mirror Company of Los Angeles, with the takeover of two small British paperback companies, Ace Books Ltd and Four Square...

, paperback, 1 April 1980, ISBN 0450049310).

DVD release

The first five series have been released by Network, on Region 2 DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

in 2007, 2009 and 2011: The sixth series is scheduled to follow at some point.

DVD	Release date
The Complete Series 1	19 March 2007
The Complete Series 2	16 July 2007
The Complete Series 3	12 November 2007
The Complete Series 4	22 June 2009
The Complete Series 5	13 June 2011
The Complete Series 6	TBA
The Complete Series 7
The Complete Series 8
The Complete Series 9
The Complete Series 10
The Complete Series 1 to 10 Box Set