A few weeks ago when the original To the Manor Born team met up for
the first script read-through of the new 25-years-on Christmas special,
Penelope Keith and Peter Bowles snapped instantly back into their former
roles and at once their old chemistry as Audrey and Richard started to
crackle and fizz. At the end Gareth Gwenlan, who had produced and directed
all the old shows, said, “Well, it’s like we have never been away.”
But we had been away and for a very long time, long enough for a generation of
the show’s audience to have died off and a new generation who had never
heard of it to have been born. There was no way that the script we were
reading could be just a hark-back to the show of the early Eighties, picking
up the story where it had left off, relying on the memories and loyalty of To
the Manor Born devotees. Things had changed.
The last we heard from the Manor was in 1981, when Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton and
Richard De Vere finally sank their differences – or at least put them on
hold – and got married. By then their financial positions had suddenly
reversed with a timely inheritance that restored her to the manor at the
precise moment that his supermarket empire collapsed. Their change of
fortunes and the marriage had completely changed the original premise – the
“sit” part of the situation-comedy – at least assuming the protagonists were
now living under the same roof. Before, the set-up had been that their
continual crossfire was conducted between separate encampments where they
could plan their campaigns and retreat, bruised, to sulk when the going got
tough.
Also, time had passed, and in the meantime two of the show’s mainstay
characters, their respective elderly confidants (Brabinger, Audrey’s butler,
and old Mrs Polouvicka, Richard’s mother) would have died. So we had 25
years of back-story to account for, and as well as having to find something
new for the first-time audience to latch on to.
In its time – the Thatcher years – the show was meant to portray what then
seemed to be the last gasps of a dying breed. It turns out that reports of
its death have been grossly exaggerated. But while people of that feudal
old-world view and station do exist, the world around them has moved on.
If the landed gentry were up against it then, how much more beleaguered would
they feel now, particularly in agricultural communities, in a new world of
computers, mobile phones, iPods, GPS, GM crops, Brussels, country protest
marches and the whole environment thing – not to mention the hunting ban?
There was no mention of any of these things in the old notebook I used to keep
of ideas for the show – which I had lobbed years ago anyway, not believing
that I would ever need it again.
The prospect of a revival has come up before, but we always agreed not to
attempt it in the face of that lurking fear that nothing can ever be quite
as good as people like to remember it. So I thought it was very brave of the
cast to agree to recreate their old roles. Once I knew that they were on
board, and that we also had the original director as well as the old
location, it seemed to gather an unstoppable momentum. But we all knew we
had to resist the temptation to make it an unashamed trip down memory lane.
That is not to say that we have shied away from preserving the best elements
of the old show – but only those that would still be realistic today. It’s
not giving too much away to say that we have still got Audrey’s
long-suffering old schoolfriend, Marjory (Angela Thorne), though Audrey has
a new butler (Alan David), and we have included one of those set-piece film
sequences of some exclusive country leisure pursuit.
The story is about a very contemporary issue; we’ve updated the world around
the parochial life of the Manor, and added some younger blood to the regular
cast in the shape of Alexander Armstrong.
I say “we” because, thankfully, there have been a lot of heads on the script
with everybody chipping in so that it could go on evolving all through the
film shoot and the studio rehearsals.
The big question, though, is how has the De Vere marriage worked out? Their
romance and courtship were never less than tempestuous. And how are they
getting on these days and have they moved with the times? I’m afraid I’m not
telling. Christmas Day, BBC One, 9.30pm
The last laugh?
If they can bring back To the Manor Born, says Bruce Dessau, why not
some of these?
Man About The House (ITV, 1973-76)
Forget Men Behaving Badly, this was the first and finest flatshare
sitcom, with Richard O’Sullivan’s lamb chop sideburns deserving a spin-off
series in their own right and Sally Thomsett fuelling a thousand adolescent
fantasies. It can surely only be Russell Brand in the update frame as the
permanently randy Robin Tripp.
Are You Being Served? (BBC One, 1972-85)
Hard to remake a Noughties sitcom set in a huge department store when most
shoppers will soon be travelling in a cyberspace lift and shopping online,
but if they act fast they could coax The Friday Night Project’s
Alan Carr into the pin-stripes of Mr Humphries. If he is free.
The Good Life (BBC One, 1975-78)
Why BBC One is reviving To the Manor Born rather than this classic
escapes me. With its timely eco-theme, this is the perfect plot to recycle.
Paul Eddington might have gone to the great semidetached suburb in the sky,
but Penelope Keith and Richard Briers are still around and Felicity Kendal
is as luminous as ever, so who needs a recast?
It Ain’t Half Hot Mum (BBC One, 1974-81)
A bit tricky given the potential racism minefield, not to mention accusations
of homophobia levelled at Windsor Davies’s bellowing sergeant-major. But
maybe there is some scope for a contemporary revisit, setting it in
Afghanistan and adding a sharper satirical edge. Then again, it could go all
out for laughs and cast Matt Lucas as Gunner “Lofty” Sugden and David
Walliams as frock-wearing Bombardier “Gloria” Beaumont.
Love Thy Neighbour (ITV, 1972-76)
The controversial sitcom in which a black family moves next door to a white
racist with hilarious consequences. How they would get away with the scene
in which Rudolph Walker dressed as a Zulu warrior we don’t know, but
ironically politically incorrect Ricky Gervais would be a shoo-in for the
role of Eddy Booth. With his floppy, greasy fringe and dodgy gags he is
already a dead ringer for original star Jack Smethurst.
Blackadder (BBC One, 1983-89)
Forget the disappointing one-offs that have followed, the four series
following the scheming Blackadder dynasty down the ages were comedy
landmarks. The Beeb probably couldn’t afford Rowan Atkinson, Hugh Laurie and
Stephen Fry these days, but Peep Show’s Mitchell and Webb could do
a cut-price Fry and Laurie and Simon Amstell could make a younger, cuter
Rowan Atkinson.
Butterflies (BBC One, 1978-83)
There should be a law that says you can’t settle down to yuletide telly
without Nicholas Lyndhurst cropping up somewhere. But rather than another
rerun of Only Fools and Horses, let’s rework Butterflies,
only this time with Lyndhurst in Geoffrey Palmer’s role as long-suffering
dad Ben Parkinson. And Catherine Tate as concrete custard-making Ria instead
of Wendy Craig. And Noel Fielding of The Mighty Boosh in
Lyndhurst’s old teenage role. OK, Fielding might be too old, but by
Christmas evening you should be too stuffed with brandy butter to notice.
