Tilling is a pretty English country town in the Cotswolds. Its inhabitants, trailed by tradespeople and domestics, enjoy private incomes and pursue lifestyles of varying pretensions.
In this small, backbiting, busybody society, anyone who does not know his provincial place is shown it pretty sharply. Skies are blue, grass is green, servants abound and if, in 1930, there is a world elsewhere, no one wants to know.
At the start, dowdy and lugubrious maiden-lady Elizabeth Mapp (Prunella Scales) lives in Tilling. Widowed Lucia (Geraldine McEwan) lives in Riseholme. Then Lucia, with her devoted, bewigged, faintly ludicrous and very closeted friend Georgie (Nigel Hawthorne), moves to Tilling and, with vigorous and high-toned malice, launches herself into violent power-struggles with Mapp.
Lucia and Georgie eventually marry each other, but this is less about romance and more about attaining power and position in Tilling society. In fact, the two are only really passionate when playing Mozart duets together at the piano.
Emmeline ‘Lucia’ Lucas
Geraldine McEwan Miss Elizabeth Mapp
Prunella Scales Georgie Pillson
Nigel Hawthorne Major Benjamin ‘Benjy’ Flint
Denis Lill Godiva ‘Diva’ Plaistow
Mary MacLeod Rev. Kenneth Bartlett
James Greene ‘Quaint’ Irene Coles
Cecily Hobbs Mr Algernon Wyse
Geoffrey Chater Mrs Susan Wyse MBE
Marion Mathie Grosvenor
Geraldine Newman Cadman
Ken Kitson Foljambe
Lucinda Gane Withers
Cherry Morris Mr Woolgar
David Gooderson
