Village Hall: Silver Threads (Sylvia Coleridge Season)
Another series which hasn't appeared on this blog before, largely for the reason that I've never got on with it very well. I watched this episode purely to see what it was like because it has Sylvia Coleridge in it, and am overjoyed to say that it is an absolute delight. This is another of those rare times when your life would be much better spend in going and searching out Silver Threads on YouTube and watching it instead of reading my witterings. Thinking that perhaps I haven't approached the series in the right mindset, after enjoying this one so much I sought out a couple of other episodes and didn't take to them at all, so I have comcluded that I've hit on a star with this one.
Village Hall (1974-5) was a two series programme set entirely in a village hall and solely about the events in the hall and the people who used it. Over the two series it featured a football match, a writers' group, ballet classes, an auction, a beauty competition, a first aid class, a baking competition, a badminton tournament, a film night, talks, military reunions, a Darby and Joan dinner and people sheltering from a gas leak. Phew. It also attracted a scintillating cast of stars, since its episodes obviously had different casts: including John le Mesurier, George Cole, Ian Hendry, Arthur English, Patrick Troughton, Lewis Collins, and Keith Chegwin.
I really can't tell why I haven't liked it very much, because of course all the episodes essentially consist of similar things to this episode: the relationships of the people using the hall, and the events while they are there. I see that the series had a total of ten different directors and ten writers, and I have to say that anthology series always set me up to dislike them. It's just something about the difference in approach and feel, so that may be what's coming into play here.
The subject of Silver Threads is an old folks' dinner and entertainment being held for a Darby and Joan club called Silver Threads. We see the lady (who is obviously the person who Does Everything in the village, and is the daughter of a lord and thus poor, so she has married money and is looked down on for being nouveau riche) who is running the meal getting ready with the Major, her assistant, and the guests beginning to arrive. I have to say they are all magnificently bitchy about each other, and this programme must have been hugely fun for the cast to make, which I always think makes a programme more likeable.
We see the dinner, and because everyone is drinking home made wine everyone gets gradually merrier, less inhibited and so more frank but less likely to take offence.
Because the entertainment can't get there, the old folk step in to entertain and Sylvia Coleridge's character sings and dances. Then the entertainment do arrive but really don't go down very well and ultimately are given something to eat while the old folk carry on with the entertainment.
I think this might be the reason I like this episode so much: there is an immediacy, reality, and do-it-yourself aspect about it which is exactly what I like best.
Sylvia Coleridge plays one of the elderly guests at the meal. Her family have obviously lived in the village for a very long time because they used to own the Hall, but don't any more. She has had a career in ballet. The character suits Coleridge perfectly.
My absolutely favourite bit is that among the guests is a man whom nobody can understand, but nonetheless he takes part in entertaining the others. Another of my favourite actresses, Denise Coffey, plays one of the women working in the kitchen to make the meal. She is another actress who frequents portrays rather eccetric characters in surreal shows, so it's interesting here to see her take a much lower-key role and hardly stand out at all.
I don't have a criticism of this episode.
Altogether well worth your time, not just for Sylvia Coleridge, but for the whole episode, which is an absolute joy.
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