1 9 9 6 – 1 9 9 8 (UK)
16 x 30 minute episodes
This BBC comedy-drama followed a group of women working as telephone operators in a GPO telephone exchange in Derby in 1959 (first series) and 1961 (second series).
Letitia Dean, fresh from her 10-year stint as Sharon Watts in EastEnders, played Chris Cross, the sex-bomb who had a thing going with the Lawrence Harvey lookalike who served as the love interest.
A local accent coach was listed in the credits, but Letitia Dean must have done a lot of skiving off. Her version of the vernacular was to smush her lips around her face like Hylda Baker or Les Dawson doing one of his Northern old bags.
Curvaceous Chris Cross’s sidekick was the skinny Sylvia Sands (Amy Marston) – the alliterative names (there was also a Fanny Fanshawe) were a true indication of the comic-strip nature of the enterprise – a pinko, Ban-the-Bomb subversive.
The arrival of engineer Dave Curtis from Leamington (Mark Aiken) set pulses racing, though the discovery that his job was to automate the old manual switchboards precipitated a union-directed “go slow” protest.
It was tosh, but relaxing and undemanding tosh.
Sylvia Sands
Amy Marston
Chris Cross
Letitia Dean
Miss Armitage
Stephanie Turner
Miss Marriott
Maggie McCarthy
Val Latimer
Samantha Seager
Ronni Ferrari
Helen Sheals
Pam Heath
Kate Lonergan
Jim
Paul Parris
Dick Mandeville
Colin Wells
Fanny Fanshaw
Beverley Klein
Dave Curtis
Mark Aiken
Phil Davenport
Andy Greenhalgh
Rick Hollister
Daniel Newman
Graham
Alex Knight
Susi Simmons
Samantha Hardcastle
Mrs Sands
Sandra Voe
Len
Andrew Forbes
