Nanny, about the experiences of a children’s nanny in the 1930s, represented something of a variation upon the matriarchal roles Wendy Craig had become associated with.
The story of nanny Barbara Gray, caring for the children of the rich and well-connected was, in fact, Craig’s own idea, submitted and accepted under the pen name ‘Jonathan Marr’ after she got the idea while flicking through advertisements for children’s nurses in The Lady magazine. It eschewed comedy for a straighter dramatic approach.
Comparisons between Craig’s enlightened nanny Gray adding a helping hand to obviously dysfunctional upper-crust families and cinema’s Mary Poppins were inevitable but did not detract from the success of the series and an increase in the numbers of girls planning careers as nannies was duly reported as a result.
