An elderly widow rejects her family’s expectations to find personal freedom in the final years of her life.
At the age of 85, following the death of her husband, a former Prime Minister and Viceroy of India, Lady Slane (Wendy Hiller) finds herself unexpectedly liberated. Her overbearing children, including the officious Herbert (Graham Crowden) and Carrie (Phyllis Calvert), make plans for her future, assuming she will subside into a quiet, supervised old age. Lady Slane defies them. She recalls a small, secluded cottage in Hampstead she saw once decades before and, against all advice, arranges to lease it from its eccentric owner, Mr Bucktrout (Maurice Denham).
In her new home, she builds a small circle of devoted friends, including her loyal maid Genoux (Eileen Way), an elderly art restorer, Mr Gosheron (David Waller), and the reclusive millionaire FitzGeorge (Harry Andrews), a man who has silently loved her from afar for nearly seventy years.
Adapted from the novel by Vita Sackville-West, this three-part serial is a quiet and meditative character study. The production puts its faith not in plot but in atmosphere, favouring introspection over incident. Its deliberately gentle pace gives space to a formidable cast of veteran actors, with Wendy Hiller’s central performance a masterful study in quiet defiance and late-flowering self-realisation.
The serial is a faithful rendering of its source material, a story concerned with a life reconsidered, one where the protagonist finally places her own desires ahead of the public and private duties that have defined her for seven decades.
Broadcast: BBC Two, 3 Episodes, Tuesdays, 9 December – 23 December 1986
Adapted by: Peter Buckman
From the novel by: Vita Sackville-West
Director: Martyn Friend
Producer: Colin Rogers
Music: Nigel Hess
Main Cast: Wendy Hiller (Lady Slane), Harry Andrews (FitzGeorge), Maurice Denham (Mr Bucktrout), Phyllis Calvert (Carrie), Graham Crowden (Herbert), John Franklyn-Robbins (Kay), David Waller (Mr Gosheron), Eileen Way (Genoux), Faith Brook (Lavinia)
