County has had starring role on small screen
THIS week in 1938 TV pictures arrived in Gloucestershire. Prior to that the pleasures of the box were available only to those who lived within a 30-mile radius of the BBC transmitter at Alexandra Palace, London.
Tests were conducted by the West Gloucestershire Power Company in conjunction with Marconi, culminating in the first flickering images.
The opening programme viewed by people in the county was a variety show starring George Robey, inset.
Not many people watched, as there were only 350,000 households with a TV in the whole country.
What’s more, TV was strictly for the wealthy. Priced at 60 guineas (£63) a television set was about half the price of a brand new family saloon car.
It took a year or two for the new medium to find its feet, but by 1952 the BBC was screening a service that started at 3pm on weekdays and 5pm on Sundays.
No programmes were aired between 6pm and 7pm, then they began again and continued until 10.30pm when the National Anthem was played and the day’s broadcasting came to an end.
Since those pioneering times Gloucestershire has provided the backdrop for numerous TV shows.
Gloucester Docks was the setting for the BBC TV serial The Onedin Line, which starred a three masted sailing ship named the John Howard.
Set in the late 19th century, this show was first screened between 1972 and 1980.
The central character James Onedin, played by Peter Gilmore, was an ambitious young man who struggled to make his fortune by establishing a shipping line.
Gloucester was also the location for the 1997 BBC TV production Berkeley Square.
The story of this costume drama concerned three nannies in Edwardian days who were seen pushing sit-upand-beg prams around Brunswick Square, Spa Road and St Michael’s Square.
A couple of Charles Dickens stories made for the small screen were filmed in the city.
In 1994 an impressive cast that included Paul Schofield, John Mills, Julia Sawalha and Peter Postlethwaite could be seen strolling about the Docks in full Victorian garb while filming the BBC version of Martin Chuzzlewit.
Our Mutual Friend, the last novel written by Charles Dickens, was made in the county at Eastleach in 1997 starring Timothy Spall and Pam Ferris.
The country writer and broadcaster John Moore was brought up in Tewkesbury and his childhood home was the High Street building that’s now the Tudor House Hotel.
Moore’s stories were set in and around the town, one of the most successful being Portrait of Elmbury, which was filmed for TV.
A house in Cheltenham’s Bournside Road provided the venue for Butterflies, the BBC comedy series that entertained viewers between 1978 and 1983.
This starred Wendy Craig as the long suffering wife of grumpy Geoffrey Palmer with Nicholas Lyndhurst (later Rodney in Only Fools and Horses) playing one of their sons.
Ronnie Barker made Clarence, his final TV comedy series about a short sighted removal man in the 1980s and
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much of the action was shot in the Malvernroad area of town.
The House Of Eliott was a BBC Saturday evening drama screened from 1991 to 1994 starring Stella Gonet and Louise Lombard.
Many of the scenes from this drama about a 1920s fashion house were filmed in Regent Street, Cheltenham.
In 1993 The Whistle Blower, a film made for the small screen, included scenes shot at Lansdown railway station, Lansdown Road and other parts of the town and the lead role was played by Michael Caine.
Not a lot of people know that.