This series of ten plays aired on BBC2 on Friday nights from June to August 1975. Each of the plays was adapted from a short story chosen to reflect the mood of each year, from 1920 to 1929.
The first adaptation – ‘Mr Oddy’ by Hugh Walpole – has struggling young writer Tommy Brown (Clive Francis) jealous of the attention paid by his girlfriend, Alice Smith (Angharad Rees), to Spencer Russell (John Moffat), an older, more successful novelist.
Tommy meets an eccentric old man called Alfred Oddy (Roland Culver) at a bookshop and, fired with enthusiasm, starts to write a rather condescending essay about him. But Tommy knew very little about the enigmatic Mr Oddy, who had a surprise or two up his sleeve.
‘An Adventure in Bed’, written in 1921 by Stacy Aumonier, tells the story of George Hewlett (Michael Johnson), who inherits a comfortable yearly income and finds that complete immobility leads to a much happier existence. So he retires to his bed – often for weeks on end – emerging only to take occasional quiet strolls through the park.
Then he meets the beautiful Maisie Brand (Lesley-Anne Down) in Kensington Gardens, and – much to the delight of his friend, Peter Wargrave (Julian Holloway) – he marries her and appears to forget his previous lifestyle.
As time passes, George becomes a successful, hard-headed businessman, working 24 hours a day, and Peter’s delight at his friend’s success is replaced by worry when he realises that Maisie is being neglected and that he is falling in love with her.
‘Motherlove’ was adapted from JD Beresford’s 1922 story The Indomitable Mrs Garthorme and featured young Hugh Garthorne (Barry Quin), who falls in love with violinist Paula Gonzales (Candace Glendenning) while holidaying at the exclusive resort of Biarritz in France and has to pull a few strings of his own to get round the anticipated opposition from his possessive mother (Isabel Dean) with the help of his old school friend from Harrow, Willie Edwardes (Jeremy Brett).
In an improbable (but funny) quirk of fate, Hugh has fallen in love with the girl who just happens to be the adopted daughter of his own father (Basil Henson), whom he has never seen since his mother disowned her husband when he went to jail for petty theft in the days when both were poor.
George Chakiris (of West Side Story fame) starred as James Dell, a rich young American reporter, in ‘The Orsini Emeralds’ (adapted from The Eleventh Hat by GB Sterne). James goes to a society party in Hampstead and meets the charming hostess, Mrs Isobel Asterley (Ursula Howells), who has an emerald pendant which belongs to Italy’s Orsini family.
But James knows that the regal, sophisticated Mrs Asterley was once “Reynolds”, the English nanny in the Dell home in America some thirty years ago. Not only that, but Reynolds was also in love with James’s father, who left her the priceless gems in his will.
So now young James, out of revenge for his mother, decides to reveal the family secrets in the form of a letter to a medium, Jehane (Ann Beach), who is to be the guest of honour at the party. The seance reaches a dramatic conclusion when James steals the necklace from Mrs Asterley’s neck – and is allowed by her to keep them at the end.
Fanny Castle (Elizabeth Bennett) returns to her hometown to marry her first admirer, Harry Goodall (Tom Chadbon), in ‘Fanny and Annie’, written by DH Lawrence in 1924.
Fanny has been a ladies’ maid in London and will now live with her Aunt Lizzie (Gwen Watford) before marrying Harry. She is disturbed by Harry’s almost indifferent attitude towards her, and Fanny – who has “seen the world” – feels restless and ill-at-ease with him.
Then Mrs Nixon (Barbara Bolton), the local village dragon, publicly accuses Harry (in the middle of service in the Congregational chapel) of getting her daughter, Annie (Shirley Steedman), pregnant.
Unfortunately, in place of DH Lawrence’s original ending, the production substituted a schmaltzy girl-runs-away/boy-pursues-her routine, which (given the character of Lawrence’s heroine and the context of her situation) was so wrong it was positively painful.
‘Two or Three Graces’ by Aldous Huxley starred Tony Beckley as Dick Wilkes, who meets old friend Grace Peddley (Celia Bannerman) at a concert and, although both are married, they arrange to see each other again. Gradually, Grace is drawn into the artistic set and tries to become like the people who surround her in a vain search for her own character.
In ‘Aunt Tatty’ (dramatised by Fay Weldon from the 1926 story by Elizabeth Bowen), Paul Pellew (Lewis Fiander) visits the family home of his young girlfriend, Eleanor Maltby (Angela Thorne), under the guise of studying churches because Eleanor is anxious that her family should know nothing of their (socially incompatible) affair.
Eleanor’s formidable Aunt Tatty (Mary Morris) – an indomitably clever woman – is very disapproving of the young man and it is clear that at one time, she had married someone out of her class.
‘The Anarchist’ by Eden Philpotts was dramatised by Leslie Sands and had Nicholas Grace as surly young socialist Joe Manders, who finds, to his mortification, that he is in love with Susie Cliff (Zuleika Robson). When Susie tells Joe there is an important man in her life, Joe insists on knowing who it is, but Susie will not reveal the name.
Joe inherits the bulk of the fortune belonging to his old Aunt Mary (Cathleen Nesbitt), who knows that beneath his gruffness, he has a heart of gold. Like a true socialist, he wants to give it away to the poor, but his old boss, Matthew Ford (Patrick Barr) has some words of advice about this and about the mystery man in Susie’s life.
Polly James from The Liver Birds starred in ‘Her Wedding Morn’ (written by Sheila Kay-Smith in 1928) as Ivy Skedmore, who, after years of washing up in a restaurant, is at last getting married to widower Sid Hurley, a man old enough to be her father. To protect herself from the harsh realities of her surroundings, Ivy devours film-star magazines and imagines herself in the glossy world of fame and fortune.
On the morning of her wedding, Ivy is visited by her old flame, Bill who attempts to persuade her that she should marry him instead. Through her great sense of romance, Ivy finds herself in a dilemma, but ultimately, her fantasy film star world makes her mundane real world bearable.
The final episode, ‘The Fifty Pound Note’ (adapted from the AE Coppard story Fifty Pounds), starred Billie Whitelaw and John Hurt as lovers Lally and Phillip, who live happily together in squalor in a bed-sitting room.
Phillip, a proud and struggling writer, won’t allow Lally to go out to work so she decides she must leave him in order to support them both. But Lally receives an unexpected legacy of £80 and arranges to have a £50 note sent to Phillip anonymously, supposedly from an admirer.
In the end, he betrays poor Lally’s unselfish love in a despicable way.
Episodes
Mr Oddy | An Adventure in Bed | Motherlove | The Orsini Emeralds | Fanny and Annie | Two or Three Graces | Aunt Tatty | The Anarchist | Her Wedding Morn | The Fifty Pound Note
