Show Notes
Summer is finally here, so Andy & Martin are off on their hols to Crete to spend some time at Shepherd's Bar in Agios Nickolaos! Back in 1972 The Lotus Eaters was the flagship new BBC2 drama and the first of Michael J. Bird's quartet of Mediterranean-set serials.
Starring Ian Hendry and Wanda Ventham, the series focused on the failing marriage of Erik and Ann Shepherd and the lives and loves of the community meeting at their taverna. What no-one expects, including the viewer, is that Ann is a sleeper agent who is about to be activated, nor that despite this revelation such a development is not always going to be the focus of the show. Instead Bird's serial is about anyone who is running from something, looking for a place to start again and the threat that if you eat the fruit of the lotus you will never leave...
As well as Bird, the scripts were written by David Weir, David Fisher and Jack Ronder. The series was directed by Cyril Coke, Douglas Camfield, David Cunliffe and Viktors Ritelis, and produced by Anthony Read and Michael Glynn The Lotus Eaters was a new direction for UK TV drama which helped the package holiday market no end. Notably, it would find itself to be life imitating art, as Ian Hendry, just like Erik Shepherd, continued his battles with drink, love and life.
With numerous other excellent regular and guest actors - Stefan Gryff, Sylvia Coleridge, Thorley Walters, Carol Cleveland, Maurice Denham, Susan Engel, Timothy Carlton, Anouska Hempel, Godfrey James, Alethea Charlton, John Savident and Julia Goodman - this Cretan-set series is a fascinating exploration of love, motivation, trust, deceit and spying, with a large side order of raki.
So it's time to get you swimsuit on, slap on some lotion and get in the back garden. Put this in your ears for a couple of hours and float back in time to the Seventies.
Next Time: Moonbase 3
More from An A to Z of UK Television Drama
[Spoiler alert! This series is almost 50 years old but we will be revealing - around 90 minutes - in who spectacularly dies in the literal cliffhanger to episode 7. You have been warned!]
After a brief hiatus, Andy and Martin resume the second season of A to Z with the letter V. Admittedly cheating a little, their choice was 'Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton', the second of two autobiographical Dennis Potter plays from 1965 in The Wednesday Play strand. They also cover the first play, 'Stand Up, Nigel Barton'. Both feature Keith Barron as the title character who we follow from childhood, to university, to a reluctant attempt to stand as a Labour candidate in the General Election.
Andy and Martin travel back in time to the summer of 1965 and the adventures of HR consultant Drew Heriot and his sister-in-law Anne as they face up to the machinations of 'Undermind’: aliens who have brainwashed British citizens in order to cause national unrest ahead of their imminent invasion. Their various schemes include: spreading pirate radio misinformation; inciting youth violence in a seaside resort; influencing the works of a popular children’s author; the distribution of suicide-inducing birthday records; interference with the printing of exam papers, and most abominably of all, the assassination of Eamonn Andrews! Yes, really.
This month Andy and Martin review the highly regarded 1987 BAFTA-winning Scottish drama Tutti Frutti, written by John Byrne and starring Robbie Coltrane and Emma Thompson.
Twenty-one years after their first recorded interview on the first Survivors DVDs back in 2003, Andy catches up with Carolyn Seymour who played Abby Grant in Survivors.