Late Starter

1 9 8 5 – 1 9 8 6 (UK)
8 x 50 minute episodes

On his last day as the Professor of English at Birmingham University, Edward Brett (Peter Barkworth) looks forward to a well-earned rest, but life takes a drastic turn – his wife, Mary (Rowena Cooper) has left him, having secretly gambled away all his money and left him with debts of £60,000.

And so he finds himself having to start again and rebuild his life at the age of 55 in a run-down bedsit in Islington, North London while breaking the news to his son and married daughter and trying to piece together the clues of his missing wife’s secret life and the marriage which he believed to be so happy.

Though highly qualified, Edward is ill-equipped to take on the outside world and has to work in a video rental shop, as a telephone market researcher and as a temporary barman just to make ends meet.

Edward becomes an accidental hero who has good impacts on his son, Simon (Simon Cowell-Parker) and solicitor Liz Weldon (Julia Foster), the lady in the flat upstairs.

Edward Brett
Peter Barkworth
Mary Brett
Rowena Cooper
Nicki
Akosua Busia
Liz Weldon
Julia Foster
Simon Brett
Simon Cowell-Parker
Penny Johnson
Carol Leader
Colin Johnson
John Flanagan
Helen Magee
Beryl Reid
Jane Bourne
Patricia Shakesby
Michael Henryson
Donald Gee
Tina
Judith Jacob
Tracey
Johanna Hargreaves
Jean
Jane Lowe
Colonel Wood
Tenniel Evans
Peggy Haddow
Pauline Delaney

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