About the BBC Comedy Series As Time Goes By

The programme's title is a reference to the popular song "As Time Goes By", which was also used as the title music, recorded by Joe Fagin.

The show was written by Bob Larbey, who had co-written The Good Life. Second Lieutenant Lionel Hardcastle and Nurse Jean Pargetter met in the summer of 1953 or 1954 (depending on the episode) and fell in love, but when Lionel was sent to Korea they lost touch. He had sent her a letter when he arrived in Korea, which she did not receive, and both assumed the other had lost interest.

Jean married, and after her husband's death set up "Type for You", a secretarial agency. She has a daughter, Judith Hanson, who had married twice, but both ended in divorce. Lionel had gone to Kenya and became a coffee planter. He and his wife Margaret had divorced on the grounds of "mutual boredom", and he had moved back to England.

38 years later Lionel uses "Type for You" to write his book My Life in Kenya. When they both realise who the other is, their romance begins to blossom again...