17 October - 13 November 1978
3030 - 3045
All told, it’s been a reasonably eventful month at
Xrds, certainly in terms of comings and goings. There’s been a dramatic departure and the exciting returns of characters who have been absent from our screens for a while, along with a new face or two.
The “goings” department has seen the story with Mrs Bailey wrap up. Well, Mrs Bailey herself has died, but there’s a mess behind in terms of the village gossip about the relationship between she and Dr Butterworth (“Bailey & Butterworth” sounds rather like a law firm. Or perhaps a detective series. What a missed opportunity for a spin-off featuring the medic and his eccentric patient solving a new crime every week).
With her death, so ends Mrs Bailey’s ongoing theatre of the absurd. I’ll greatly miss it as provided a wacky edge to the drama, something that feels very
Xrds (or, at least, the
Xrds I envisioned, knowing it as I did primarily by reputation). Her exit, as it turns out, was rather more sombre than many of her scenes (certainly on the more “tragi” end of her entire tragicomic arc).
So far as Dr Butterworth goes, I’m afraid it doesn’t look good. Like a typical soap doctor, he seems to be characterised by good intentions and bad choices. It wasn’t just Mrs Bailey who was conditioned to develop an over-reliance on him. One of those “seriously?!” moments came after Mrs Bailey’s body was discovered, either dead or dying, and Sandy - seated beside the switchboard and telephone - instructed someone to phone for… Dr Butterworth! Nobody seemed to even consider the possibility of dialling “999”.
Is Mrs Bailey
Xrds first suicide, I wonder, or has there been one already in one of the gaps? I suspect it’s the former. It’s a thorny issue, but there’s no shortage of those at the moment.
Indeed, Jack Barton’s run is starting to be defined by two things for me: extreme strictness around retakes in the “as live” production (it’s many a year since I’ve seen anything other than “Take One”
*), and the inclusion of more social issues.
I also wonder if the series is making political statements as well. It’s done with a lighter hand than we’d see half a decade later on
Brookside, but several scenes recently have drawn attention to what I assume are real world posters to make comment.
In the
Xrds garage (on which more later) someone browsed approvingly through some posters about the sale of fireworks being prohibited to under 16s. Meanwhile, over in the surgery, genuinely ill Miss Tatum was seen to abandon her appointment with Dr Butterworth (who else) after seeing a poster on the wall which said “Be prepared to leave empty-handed” and went on to say that one should consider if their appointment is needed or a waste of the NHS’s time. Dr Butterworth’s concern about Miss Tatum and his tut-tutting when the poster was revealed as potentially driving away patients felt like a very clear frustration at the stance of either the NHS or the Government. Naturally, Miss T was coaxed back into the surgery and given plenty of Dr Butterworth’s time. Even if they’d been back home from work in time to witness this, I’m sure hardworking GPs the country over would have gazed at his peaceful waiting room, hands-on receptionist and his bottomless pool of time to spare his patients and said “If only…”.
continued
* Last night, one of several vivid dreams saw me watching a Xrds scene being filmed in which someone fluffed so many times the takes were running into double figures - possibly even the hundreds. There were so many that my dream incorporated all these quick cuts of take after take. I can’t remember who it was. An older gentleman, I think. Perhaps a character actor. The most awkward thing about watching was that he kept on trying even as it was plain to see on his face that he knew he’d never work on the series again. 
