Producer Peter Willes presented this series of seven plays for Rediffusion as a sequel and companion piece to the 1966 series, Seven Deadly Sins.
The seven plays were written by John Bowen, David Hopkins, Leo Lehmann, Bill MacIlwraith, Sheila White, Bill Naughton and Joe Orton.
Orton’s play, ‘The Good & Faithful Servant’ – representing the virtue of Faith – starred Donald Pleasence as Buchanan, a doorman retiring after 50 years at the same factory in an awkward, embarrassing ceremony and going away speech with a bored, uncaring, fidgeting audience of workmates ready to put him out of mind before he was even out of sight.
Orton and Pleasence delivered a sad, anger-making portrait of a man for whom the highlight and greatest event of his life after 65 years in an alleged ‘go-ahead Britain’ was to see his picture in the factory magazine.
Hermione Baddeley played Edith, a woman who Buchanan had wronged as a lad, and put across superbly the resigned attitude of so many working-class women of the era who expected nothing but hardship and so got nothing but hardship.
Patricia Routledge featured in a savage, unrelenting piece of acting as the firm’s ultra-efficient personnel officer, Mrs Vealfoy, running everybody’s life in a high-pitched la-di-dah voice.
The cast of the other stories included George Cole, Liz Fraser, Windsor Davies, Michael Robbins, Peter Egan, Sheila White, John Nettleton, Richard O’Callaghan and Colin Blakely.
Episodes
It’s Your Move | The Good & Faithful Servant | Surface of Innocence | The Man with Two Heads | The Whole Truth | A Pain in the Neck | Are You by Yourself?
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Orton and Pleasence delivered a sad, anger-making portrait of a man for whom the highlight and greatest event of his life after 65 years in an alleged ‘go-ahead Britain’ was to see his picture in the factory magazine.
