Nick Berry Videos : The Grove Family - Episode One - Part Three

apts bbc television service alexandra palace society simon vaughan history ally pally lime grove family edward evans nancy roberts ruth dunning christopher beeny margaret downs sheila sweet peter bryant april 1954 the episode one part three

The Grove Family - Episode One - Part Three

"Prevention and Cure" Devised by BBC producer John Warrington and written by father and son team Roland and Michael Pertwee, 'The Grove Family' was Britain's first soap opera for adults (two years after the children's equivalent, 'The Appleyards'). The series featured the seven members of a lower middle-class family living in a neat double-fronted house, with father's builder's yard attached, in a quiet road in the London suburb of Hendon. Apart from mum and dad Grove there was 90 year-old grandmother, two elder children of 20 and 18 years old, and two youngsters of 13 and 8. Each episode, lasting between 15 and 20 minutes would seem pretty tame by today's soap opera standards, concentrating on petty squabbles and everyday domestic incidents with a built in 'public service' element such as the virtues of buying a television licence or making one's house burglar proof. The producers reportedly auditioned 270 people before choosing the final cast of seven and thirteen episodes were already written before it came to the screen for the first time on a Friday night in 1954, with the family celebrating the fact that father had just paid off the mortgage on the house after 20 years. In a 1954 interview for TV Mirror, Michael Pertwee explained how the series came about: "We decided from the first to make a separate self-contained incident each week, so that anyone could switch on at any episode and understand what it was all about. Once having decided on the type of series it was ...

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