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    Nostalgia Central
    Home»Television»Shows by Decade»1980s Television
    1980s Television Comedy Shows F 2 Mins Read

    Fresh Fields/French Fields

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    1 9 8 4 – 1 9 8 6 (UK)
    26 x 25 minute episodes
    1 x Christmas special

    1 9 8 9 – 1 9 9 1 (UK)
    18 x 25 minute episodes
    1 x Christmas special

    Married for 20 years, having bred two children (Tom and Emma) who have flown the coop and made her a grandmother, Hester Fields is looking for a new start, a life of adventure in her middle years.

    She wants spice, she wants action, she wants to be endlessly interesting, but her husband William is an accountant in the City whose idea of excitement is to read the Financial Times over breakfast.

    freshfields1

    Undaunted, Hester looks for activities to take her out of herself, and, living in Barnes (an upwardly mobile district in south-west London), the opportunities are endless – dieting, exercise, cycling, pottery classes, exercise classes, even fencing classes, and part-time jobs in catering, being an OAP meals-on-wheels deliverer, even at one point being William’s office secretary.

    Life is complicated, however, by the Fields’ daughter Emma, their noisy neighbour Sonia (who liked to turn up at meal times), and the lurking presence of Hester’s mother (cue cupboard-full of mother-in-law jokes) who lives in a building at the end of the Fields’ garden.

    freshfields_04

    The author of Fresh Fields was John Chapman, and if one was looking for a comparison, one might say that this was ITV’s Happy Ever After – the BBC’s suburban sitcom, also penned by Chapman, in which June Whitfield and Terry Scott had their domestic ups and downs in the trying presence of dear old Aunt Lucy.

    Both series were very successful, running and running, without losing much puff, for years and years.

    Fresh Fields, indeed, was held in such high regard that it won an International Emmy, and prompted a sequel French Fields.

    Hester Fields 
    Julia McKenzie 
    William Fields 

    Anton Rodgers
    Sonia Barratt 

    Ann Beach
    Nancy Penrose 

    Fanny Rowe 
    Guy Penrose

    Ballard Berkeley 
    Emma Richardson

    Debbie Cumming (1)
    Sally Baxter (2)
    Karen Ascoe (3)
    Peter Richardson
    Philip Bird
    Miss Denham 
    Daphne Oxenford

    Jill Trendle 
    Liz Crowther
    Giles Trendle 

    Robin Kermode
    Monsieur Dax 

    Olivier Pierre
    Marie -Christine
    Victoria Baker
    Chantal Moriac

    Pamela Salem

    Video

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