Comedy was a real love-in
MARION McMULLEN discovers how love was truly in the air 40 years ago with the debut of A Fine Romance
THE considerable acting talents of real-life couple Judi Dench and Michael Williams made A Fine Romance a sitcom with style.
The ITV comedy was written by Bob Larbey of ‘Please, Sir’ television fame and followed the fortunes of two middle-aged, unmarried professionals – translator Laura Dalton and landscape gardener Mike Selway.
They met when Laura’s younger sister Helen and her husband Phil (Susan Penhaligon and Richard Warwick) decided to play Cupid and invited the two confirmed singletons to a family party.
Laura and Mike quickly realised they had been set up on a blind date and decided to pretend they were getting along famously so they could make their excuses
and escape from the gathering early.
A Fine Romance launched on ITV on November 1, 1981, and was Judi Dench’s first TV comedy role. The rocky romance between the chalkand-cheese couple captured the imagination of viewers and was told in 26 episodes over the next few years. The sitcom finally ended in 1984 with an episode entitled Happy Ever After? The comedy was nominated for nine Baftas and won four, while writer Bob Larbey later worked with Judi again on another romantic sitcom, 1992’s As Time Goes By, which saw her star alongside Geoffrey Palmer as two former lovers who accidentally meet again after 38 years. Judi’s late husband Michael was no stranger to the romantic gesture and used to have a long-stemmed rose delivered to her every week. She once said of their relationship: “He would say ‘I’m always rushing for the dark, you’re always rushing for the light. If we hold in the middle, there’s a kind of balance’”.