Following the success of Little Women when it was televised earlier in 1958, the BBC screened Louisa May Alcott’s sequel (adapted for television by Constance Cox) in September of that year.
Most of the cast remained the same, including Phyllis Calvert as ‘Marmee’, though two of the girls – Jo and Amy – were now played by different actresses.
Good Wives picked up the story three years after the close of Little Women and was once again set in a small New England community in the latter half of the 19th century.
Meg (Kate Cameron) and John (Harvey Hall) are now married and have twins, while Amy (Jill Dixon) has left on a European tour with her aunt.
Beth (Diana Day) is weak due to complications from scarlet fever.
Laurie (David Cole) has graduated from college, doing well in his last year with Jo’s help. Laurie has fallen in love with Jo (Annabelle Lee), but while she cares for him like a brother, Jo does not have romantic feelings for him, so she moves to New York to stay with a friend of her mother’s who runs a boarding house and works as a governess for her two children.
While in New York, Jo takes German lessons from another boarder, Professor Friedrich Bhaer (George Pravda), unaware that he is in love with her. When she returns to Massachusetts, she declines Laurie’s marriage proposal.
Laurie leaves to travel around Europe with his grandfather to escape his heartbreak, and there he meets Amy. When news of Beth’s death reaches them in Europe, it brings them together, and a romance develops. They marry before leaving Europe.
In Massachusetts on business, Friedrich Bhaer visits the Marches daily for two weeks, proposing to Jo on his last visit. They become engaged, but Friedrich must travel West to teach and earn a dependable income.
When Aunt March (Anita Sharp-Bolster) dies, she leaves her large estate, Plumfield, to Jo, who marries Friedrich and turns the house into a school for boys.
They have two sons, and Amy and Laurie have a daughter. At apple-picking time, Marmee celebrates her 60th birthday at Plumfield, with her husband (Edward Jewesbury), who is now home from the Civil War, her three surviving daughters, their husbands, and five grandchildren.
Mrs Margaret March (Marmee)
Phyllis Calvert Jo March
Annabelle Lee Amy March
Jill Dixon Meg Brooke (March)
Kate Cameron Beth March
Diana Day Laurie
David Cole John Brooke
Harvey Hall Mr Lawrence
Noel Howlett Hannah
Aithna Gover Professor Friedrich Bhaer
George Pravda Aunt March
Anita Sharp-Bolster Mr March
Edward Jewesbury Fred Vaughn
John Forrest Mrs Carrol
Edith Saville Mary
Peggy Forbes-Robertson
