An anthology series of eight plays concerning individuals attempting to escape the confines of their everyday lives.
This series presented a collection of eight self-contained dramas, each examining characters in states of transition or flight from their usual circumstances. The opening play, Penelope Mortimer’s adaptation of Colette’s The Ripening Seed, stars Gayle Hunnicutt as a mysterious older woman who becomes involved with a young man.
Subsequent stories included Carey Harrison’s The New Life, in which Helen (Maureen O’Brien) leaves her husband to live in Sardinia with an older actor, Alec (Philip Latham); William Douglas Home’s On Such A Night, starring Geraldine McEwan and Nigel Davenport as a couple confronting their past; and Angela Huth’s The Summer House, a drama set during a country house party led by Constance Cummings.
The series used its title not as a simple hook for escapist fantasies but as a dramatic question posed to a roster of distinguished writers and actors. The plays were often intellectual, dialogue-heavy examinations of what it truly means to seek a new life, frequently finding that one’s old self is not so easily left behind.
Carey Harrison’s The New Life, for example, was constructed less as a Mediterranean romance than as a rigorous two-handed debate on the practical and emotional limitations of freedom. Unifying an eclectic collection of stories and talent under a single thematic banner, the series stands as a strong example of the BBC’s commitment to the single play format in the 1970s.
Broadcast: BBC Two, 8 Episodes, Sundays, 1 April – 20 May 1973
Writers included: Penelope Mortimer, Carey Harrison, William Douglas Home, Angela Huth, Evan Jones
Directors included: Mischa Scorer, Robert Knights, Philip Dudley, Tim Combe, James Cellan Jones
Producer: Innes Lloyd
Script Editor: Terence Brady
Main Cast included: Gayle Hunnicutt (Mme Dalleray), Maureen O’Brien (Helen), Philip Latham (Alec), Geraldine McEwan (Molly), Nigel Davenport (Eric), Constance Cummings (Lady Grania), Michael Bryant (Chris), Heather Sears (Rachel), Derek Godfrey (Dundas)
