About Opentopia
Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

After Henry

Encyclopedia : A : AF : AFT : After Henry

After Henry is a situation comedy devised and written by Simon Brett. It was originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4 for four series of eight episodes plus two specials (1985-1989), and eventually moved to Thames Television (1988-1992).

The radio series

Sarah France (Prunella Scales) is the 42-year-old widow of a GP, Henry. She lives in an often volatile family situation with her mother, Eleanor Prescott (Joan Sanderson), and her daughter, eighteen-year-old Clare France (Gerry Cowper), with both of whom she shares a house. After Henry's death, all three members of the family have to find a way to cope with each other as best they can.

This sitcom is really about generations. Sarah often finds herself in the middle of things, usually figuratively, but always literally, given that she has her mother living upstairs and her daughter in the basement flat.

Eleanor, the grandmother, is ruthlessly cunning and takes every opportunity to get one over on Sarah. Anything told to Eleanor will spread by word of mouth throughout an extensive network of the elderly of the area, or the "geriatric mafia". Clare, the daughter, is trying to be independent of her mother, though often has to come running back in times of crisis.

The relationships between the three women change constantly through each episode. Sometimes mother and daughter ally against grandmother, sometimes mother and grandmother go against daughter, but usually grandmother and granddaughter gang up on the long-suffering Sarah.

Sarah's one haven is Bygone Books, the remarkably unsuccessful second-hand bookshop where she works for Russell (Benjamin Whitrow) who dispenses in turn sympathy and wisdom. Most of the time, Russell sees the women's relationships second-hand through Sarah, although he isn't opposed to taking the occasional more active rôle when necessary. In turn, Sarah can see some of Russell's difficulties of living with a gay partner in 1980s London suburbia.

All four series were produced by Pete Atkin.

A novel, also by Simon Brett, followed the radio series. (ISBN 0670817325 hardback, ISBN 0140101616 paperback)

Transfer to television

The BBC's reluctance to produce After Henry for television gave Thames Television the opportunity to try an initial run of six episodes, also written by Simon Brett, which was broadcast in 1988 after the end of the third radio series. This kept Prunella Scales and Joan Sanderson in their rôles, but introduced Janine Wood as Clare and Jonathan Newth as Russell. The show was surprisingly popular, attracting over 14 million viewers. A second, longer television series was shown the following year, during the same months as the fourth radio series, with, in many cases, both radio and television episodes being broadcast on the same nights. Eventually this led to four television series and two specials, ending with Joan Sanderson's death in 1992.

The adaptation for television allowed more to be seen of some of the more minor characters in the radio series, with appearances by some who had appeared only by reputation on the radio. These included Vera Poling (simultaneously Eleanor's best friend and rival, played by Peggy Ann Wood), Mary (Anne Priestley), and Sam Greenland, Russell's partner (Edward de Souza).

The first three series and the special episodes were produced and directed by Peter Frazer-Jones, while the fourth series was directed by Liddy Oldroyd, and produced by Bill Shepherd. The executive producer of the fourth series was John Howard Davies.

Radio Episode List

Series 1

Series 2

Series 3

Series 4

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: