Porridge is just actually a British situation comedy broadcast on BBC1 from 1974 to 1977, running for a different string, two Christmas specials and a feature film titled P-Orridge. It stars Ronnie Barker and Richard Beckinsale as two inmates in the literary HMP Slade in Cumberland. "Doing porridge" is British slang for serving a prison sentence, P-Orridge once being the conventional morning meal in UK prisons.The series was followed with a 1978 sequel, Going Straight, which found that Fletcher would be moving back to prison. Porridge has been voted number seven in a 2004 BBC poll of the 100 greatest British sitcoms.