This anthology series of stand-alone love stories from the BBC debuted on 4 August 1967 and ran until 25 August 1969.
The situations ranged from Syria to the West Coast of America, from Italy’s Lake Como to swinging Chelsea. The characters ranged from an Arabian girl to a middle-aged American artist, from a penniless musician in Florence to a hard-bitten alcoholic English widow.
The relationships were sometimes happy, sometimes tragic. Some were straightforward, others complex. But they all had one thing in common – love, often between the most unlikely people.
Stories included; ‘Goodnight Pelican’ in which a female music student in Paris (Kika Markham) fell for the son of a glittering leader of Parisian society (Ian Ogilvy); ‘The Raging Moon’ which told the angry, funny and tragic story of the love between wheelchair-bound polio sufferers Annette (Anna Calder-Marshall) and Bruce (Ray Brooks) which blossomed in the sanctimonious atmosphere of a charity nursing home; ‘Across The Frontier’, with a British sergeant falling for an Arab girl (Elizabeth Bell) on trial for murder, and ‘The Eye of Heaven’ in which two men – one of them blind – fell in love with the same girl, who made her decision and inadvertently destroyed them all.
Diana Dors starred in ‘Where Have All The Ghosts Gone?’ in one of her rare television performances as Megan Norton-Grey, an embittered alcoholic who blamed her daughter, Sally (Marty Cruickshank), for the death of her husband in a car crash.
For the most part, existing novels were adapted by masters of the craft such as Julia Jones and John Wiles, and the stories were enhanced by the music of Ron Grainer.
Actors who appeared in the series included Gemma Jones, Una Stubbs, John Alderton, Jack Hedley, Tom Conti, Felicity Kendal, Sylvia Coleridge, Jenny Agutter, Malcolm McDowell, David Prowse, Brigit Forsyth, Carmen Silvera, James Bolam, Bernard Hepton, Annette Crosbie, Gordon Rollings, Miriam Margolyes, Kenneth Cranham, Jack Smethurst, Ralph Bates, Windsor Davies, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Geoffrey Bayldon, Judy Cornwell, Bryan Pringle and many others.
Episodes
Goodnight Pelican | There Was I, Waiting…! | The Raging Moon | Flight of the Kingfisher | A High-Pitched Buzz | Matters of Honour | The Young Visitors | Love with a Few Hairs | Lucinda | Long After Summer || The Colour of Evening | The Miracle Summer | Where Have All the Ghosts Gone? | The Enchanted Shore | Purposes of Love | Easy on the Clutch | Up at the Villa | Curtain Fall || One, Two, Sky’s Blue | Portrait of Jennie | The Eye of Heaven | A Name in Lights | Across the Frontier | Once in Every Lifetime
