Thanks to Talking Pictures, which has broadcast all the episodes this year, I have had this chance and it had all been every bit as good as I remembered it to be and more so! So we are now looking at 1969 – the year before transmission began – a crucial year for the planning of the series. So there are three episodes in a row which essentially could have been done simultaneously by three different director plus film units … the scenes with Sefton and Edwin in Liverpool from Episode 4 could have been filmed with episode 2 or episode 5 (or elsewhere altogether).

It was thought wise to make a pilot episode so that the production team and the company executives could judge how successful our efforts in casting had been.The episode looks at the terrible conditions for German kids and defeated civilians, most unusual from a 1970 viewpoint. It’s interesting that John Finch, the creator of A Family at War, was also a pioneer of all-film drama for television at around the same time. The situation is interesting: a large family – we’re almost in Victorian novel territory – but the setting is Liverpool, which I think was then perhaps unfamiliar to many television audiences. But as its title suggests, A Family at War pays equal attention to private and domestic politics as it does to the public political sphere and its female characters are at least as complex and intriguing as its men, from the matriarchal Jean, to her eldest daughter Margaret (Leslie Nunnerley) who endures a fraught relationship with her jealous mother-in-law Celia Porter (Margery Mason), to David’s long-suffering wife Sheila (Coral Atkins), through to the skittish youngest Ashton daughter Freda (Barbara Flynn).

I also know there was a considerable amount of nit picking regarding accuracy of items on the set, for example packets in the kitchen, month of Frank Sinatra song played on the radio while the family waits for Churchill speeches, etc. The root of the problem of the marriage of Edwin Ashton (Colin Douglas) and Jean (Shelagh Fraser) is that Edwin has ‘married up,’ his wife being from the middle class, whereas he is from a mining family. The numerous photos are interesting to flick through, showing images of a bygone Lerwick, now forgotten to living memory.The characters I cared a lot about in this series were Lesley Nunnerley as Margaret, formerly an Ashton, who gets married to Ian Thompson as John Porter. The war it refers to is both external force, the global struggle that defines the historical moment the Ashtons inhabit, and an internal schism, their own private combat zone which is affected by but by no means entirely due to the exigencies of that larger conflict. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. The series examined the lives of the lower middle-class Ashton family of the city of Liverpool and their experiences from 1938 and through the Second World War.

We’d been wondering where Philip had gone … there are many reasons why characters get written out of long term series, and plot is only one of them. Although this item comes in Dutch packaging the subtitles are easily removed by using the subtitle button. The real surprise, though, is seeing a young David Bradley as 'Colin' (stuck in a reserved occupation in Preston), many years before his star turn as 'Eddie Wells' in 'Our Friends In The North' and Richard Beckinsale in a blink-and-you'll miss him role as a young soldier eating egg and chips in 1940 Belgium. By series two, you can see how they were working the schedule to film so much so quickly by using different production units.Your readers ought to know that the Norwegian/Dutch set is the COMPLETE version, whereas the Acorn set has about 30 minutes of small cuts that were made for commercial inserts.

In February 2018, Talking Pictures TV, who have been showing the series were reprimanded by OfCom for failing to censure a 1942 episode Hazard (Episode 24), (link to afamilyatwar. The site carries no advertising, and I rely on donations to help with running costs and to keep the site running for your entertainment and education. Coral Atkins witnessed the distress of a young child in foster care while appearing at a charity event one day. A good way fo younger generations to be educated in the way life was for ordinary people during those difficult years. In that year we had to cast the main characters for something which would certainly run a year, possibly two.Another interesting aside to my viewing the series was the concurrent coal miners’ strike at the time.