Sense of Place

1 9 7 8 – 1 9 7 9 (UK)
12 x 30 minute episodes

This Friday night anthology series of half-hour plays from BBC North West premiered on 14 April 1978 with ‘Pennine Man’, set in Stalybridge and starring Bryan Pringle as Kenneth McGrath (known to his friends as Kim), a middle-aged scoutmaster cracking up under the strain of his personal and domestic frustrations. The cast included Nona Williams, Harry Markham and Gerry Cowan.

‘The Day Dumbfounded Got His Pylon’ was set in fashionable, middle-class Wilmslow in Cheshire, where Rupert Skern (Roy Kinnear) – a prolific writer to the press under the pen name “Dumbfounded” – discovered that an Englishman’s home is not his castle when his beautiful garden was invaded by workmen, and he came up against the burly “Im” (Brian Glover) who had been sent to measure up the garden for a pylon.

Rosalie Williams, Arthur Spreckley, Carol MacReady and Ted Morris co-starred.

‘From the Roots Came the Rapper’ was set in Stockport and directed by Colin Bucksey. Tommy Boyle starred as Kevin, an aspiring DJ, with Margot Leicester, Jackie Fisher, Simon Malloy, Pamela Austin, and Terry McDonald in the supporting cast.

Written by Liverpool novelist/playwright Alan Bleasedale, ‘Dangerous Ambition’ was set in a Mersey township and opened with a Catholic priest (Daniel Massey) packing his bags, changing into ‘civvies’ and leaving the priesthood forever. Cleared of an indecent assault, he still senses a slur on his character.

George Hagan, Drew Dawson, Rita Howard, Janette Smith, Christine Prentice and Janette Bond co-starred.

Shot on location on the Lune Estuary, ‘Seawrack” starred Bernard Lee with Philip Pollitt, Stanley Page and Rowena Parr.

Roy Kinnear returned in the title role in ‘Kasper’s Last Stand’ as Bertrand Kasper, a Blackpool Punch and Judy man whose secret ambition is to put on adult-rated puppet shows.

When he mixes up his puppets, his ambition suddenly becomes reality. Elaine Donnelly co-starred as Kasper’s wife, who was called – wait for it – Judy.

A policeman, a showman and an incontinent donkey added to the jollity.

Each of the Sense of Place plays was specially written by local writers living in the North West region.

The series returned in April 1979 with a moving play called ‘Lamaload’ by Cheshire writer Alan Garner set in the remote hills above Macclesfield. Young lovers Jane (Virginia Moore) and David (Stewart Bevan) return to her childhood home to find that it has been turned into a reservoir.

This was followed by ‘Joggers’ by Bill Morrison, featuring six office girls in a lunchtime jogging club running through Sefton Park in Liverpool, orchestrated by Wagnerian melodies emanating from a gentleman in the bushes whose delight in practising the French Horn has not been appreciated by his family.

‘Find Me First’ was written by Shelagh Delaney and starred Avis Bunnage and Annette Crosbie as estranged sisters Henrietta, who lives in a comfortable house with locks and bolts on every door, and Isobel, who lives the life of a dosser amongst rapes, muggings and murders.

A dramatic adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ was made in conjunction with the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool, with a man in a Liverpool office reenacting in his imagination the last hours of a condemned prisoner.

The final two plays in the 1979 series were ‘We Had Some Happy Hours’, a comedy play by Henry Livings, specially written for Roy Kinnear and his wife Carmel Cryan, telling of a disastrous picnic at Prestwich Clough, near Bury, and ‘Tuebrook Tanzi and the Venus Flytrap’, about a female wrestler (played by Donna Champion).

Episodes

Pennine Man | The Day Dumbfounded Got His Pylon | From the Roots Came the Rapper | Dangerous Ambition | Seawrack | Kasper’s Last Stand || Lamaload | Joggers | Find Me First | The Ballad of Reading Gaol | We Had Some Happy Hours | Tuebrook Tanzi and the Venus Flytrap