Take Three Girls: Keep Hoping (Sylvia Coleridge Season)
Once again I owe my reintroduction to a series I have tried in the past and not got along with, to doing posts themed around an actor's work. Take Three Girls is a legendary British TV show which you won't have read about on this blog or its predecessor for the simple reason that, as I say, I have watched it in the past and simply not got on very well with it.
Take Three Girls, broadcast over two series in 1969-71, is legendary for the reason that it was either the first, or one of the first series to be broadcast in colour by the BBC. It is about the lives of three young women sharing a flat in Swinging London: this is therefore very much set in the same world as the latter series of The Avengers, or even of Department S. As with so much television of the era, nearly half of it is missing believed wiped.
Please don't shoot me for saying this, because I'm aware that it has a solid body of enthusiasts who love this show dearly and maybe even watched it on its first broadcast, but I'm afraid the evidence I'm seeing on the internet is that this show isn't very popular. Its legendary reputation goes ahead of it, but frankly there are precious few reviews and chat about it online, which would indicate that the fan base is enthusiastic but slight. I think there are a few things militating against any popularity it might experience. It has never had a commercial release as far as I know. What episodes there are available, are on YouTube in their washed-out, unrestored glory, complete with the time clock running along the bottom and which reel we are on, at the top. We are in proper television archaeology territory here, and while I obviously don't mind that, I think a lot of people are put off by having to do work simply to find a series. In television archaeology terms I think some of the episodes have got confused - for example this one is in various places online as Keeping Hope - which makes it difficult for the viewer to keep track. I think there's also a problem that two out of the three characters changed between the first and second series, which I think is never an asset to a two-series programme because you've got to get your characters firmly established with the public before you do things like that. Finally, as far as I can see, the show focuses on one character at a time, so I think probably the viewer is going to find it more difficult really to get to know the characters.
Another, integral, aspect of the show which I think viewers might find difficult is that despite every introduction to this show, including mine above, indicating that it is about three women sharing a flat, I think that gives the wrong idea. In reality the episodes are about one of the women. In this case it's about Kate, who goes to a stately home in Scotland to catalogue the library belonging to Lady Worthington. And so, far from being in Swinging London we are catapulted immediately into a remote stately home, its corridors virtually empty and inhabited by Lady Worthington herself and several very strange servants, one of whom isn't dangerous most of the time. As a result, the beginning of this episode feels very much like any other Old Dark House mystery. We see the interactions between the stentorian housekeeper and Lady Worthington, which is where most of the creepiness is revealed to the viewer.
I have some questions about Kate herself, though. She's very quick to tell Lady Worthington that her husband has abandoned her and her baby (named Aeneas, if you please) because he is 'queer' and doesn't like women. Kate feels welcome to wander around the house and look at things which are private and even get out on the roof at one point. Frankly, I found the episode rather bizarre.
Into this bizarre household there erupts John Erskine to tune the piano. He tells Kate even stranger stories, including suggestions about exactly who the dangerous garden boy's parentage is, insinuations about Lady Worthington and many details about her entire life which she may well have wanted to keep to herself. By this point it is like one those horror films where you find yourself in a creepy village and just know you're going to be sacrificed to some unspecified god. Erskine leaves but comes back later asking to stay the night to avoid driving in poor weather but spends the night in bed with Kate. In a screeching plot twist which would give you whiplash, Kate decides, on the strength of this one night of passion, to abandon the rest of her life and move in with Erskine. While this may be a quintessentially Swinging London thing to do, it's also clear that doing that sort of thing is how you end up with ex husbands, bringing up children on your own.
I suppose if you want to draw these disparate themes together, you could say that the entire episode is about relationships, and especially the propriety or otherwise of various sorts of relationships. The hip Kate is contrasted with the establishment Lady Worthington, who it appears has behaved very unconventionally in her time despite her pedigree. I wonder if, in a rather trite way, the episode is suggesting that the thing to do is just go with what you think is right, follow your heart, or some such moral. However I would conclude from the episode that Lady Worthington is the model of how to do this: she has been unconventional but is still true to herself and follows her duty. Kate is, I think, projected as more likely to come a cropper with her behaviour.
Sylvia Coleridge plays Lady Worthington and of course is absolutely perfect in the role. She exactly presents the right sort of top drawer. The word for the sort of gentry she is, is quality, and Coleridge is made for the slightly down-at-heel role.
My only real criticism of this episode has already clearly come across: it isn't about three young women sharing a flat, and in fact it's a bit difficult to tell what this show is aiming for. I think this might explain the show's apparent lack of popularity. If it wants to be about three women sharing a flat, then it has to be about that. This episode could convincingly have turned into an old dark house film, but then suddenly love reared its dodgy head, and this makes it difficult to follow. Possibly I'm not smoking what the writers and production team were smoking in the sixties, and if I were in swinging London I would be more on the show's wavelength than I am.
The episode is, however, an excellent vehicle for Sylvia Coleridge and frankly is worth watching for her alone as well as the atmosphere.
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