3 July - 29 October 1979
3177 - 3202
Ironically, the staff shortage has brought us a sea of new and returning faces. There have been a series of new workers who’ve apparently come out of the kitchen to help out. And everyone knows them well even though we’ve never seen them before.
First there was the cheeky-faced chatty Irish girl who knew everyone and their business. Her more permanent replacement seems to be loveable Florence, played by an
Upstairs Downstairs favourite Jenny Tomasin (whose
UpDown character, too, had stepped into the shoes of a short-lived Irish predecessor). Already she’s proving worth her weight in gold. Her character here is essentially a contemporary version of Ruby, and that’s fine. You can’t have too much of a good thing, so why reinvent the wheel?
For some inexplicable reason, Ruby is living at Chimneys with Jill. They were briefly joined by con artist/suspected sex worker/general purpose troublemaker Norma who imposed herself into the household by pretending she was a pregnant woman in need of help. Norma spent all her time putting down poor Florence and, for a brief window, she’d even thought Florence was one of Jill’s fallen women:
Norma and her fella have now been ejected from the house by Jill, but not before she’d avenged herself by stuffing three or four tins of Jill’s baked beans down her boyfriend’s leather jacket (at least
he had the brains to suggest stealing a bottle of booze). Oh, and she also pointedly dropped Jill in it with Stan’s personal assistant Fräulein Freya Offermans by telling her about the small matter of Jill losing her temper and splitting young Sarah-Jane’s lip.
Fräulein Offermans is now engaged to be married to Stan and continues to be his de facto presence on the series as they push for custody of Sarah-Jane. It’s a shame Stan himself hasn’t appeared for the divorce/custody hearing (where Jill is represented by General von Klinkerhoffen himself). As is typical, Stan’s being portrayed in a somewhat unsympathetic light since we continue to see him through the prism of Jill’s victimhood.
I don’t know, though. Jill’s far from being written as mother of the year. Incidents such as her being too self-absorbed to remember to collect her daughter, or the above-mentioned domestic violence go quite some way to adding balance and creating at least a little more sympathy for Stan. Which is an improvement on the Saint Jill/Nasty Stan writing.
And while Jill is knocking her daughter round, Sandy has tried his hand at being a sex pest as he terrorises a woman with silent phone calls. The woman in question - Anna Drew - is a friend of Sandy’s former fiancée Fay Mansfield, and that’s who he’s been trying to reach. This being
Xrds with its revolving door, Fay herself is nowhere to be seen, and Anna’s confrontation with Sandy (in the store cupboard he’s converted into his new office) ended with him buying her a meal after she helped with the typing.
Meanwhile, Meg’s being helped out by a former teacher who was struck off for an affair with one of his students (Jill’s, naturally, is the loudest voice of condemnation). He is a sleaze, who is out to get a stake in the motel and to con Meg into unknowingly employing his new girlfriend.
Former stories have been either wrapped up or put on hold. Sharon ended things with her suitor after discovering he was pretending to love his dead wife as much as he did so that he could guilt her into a relationship. Barbara Brady’s secret life as an author is out, and neither she nor the cottage have been seen for a while now (I can’t say I’ve missed them), with Lloyd back to dispensing sage pearls of wisdom in the motel foyer.
Meanwhile, over at the new adjoining farm, Benny is back where he thought he wanted to be, only for him to end up bullied by his religious zealot of a new gaffer, who doesn’t allow his beautiful niece a looking glass because they’re the invention of satan. And you can imagine how he feels about television.
Alison (the beautiful-niece-who-doesn’t-know-she’s-beautiful) has had a shocking head scar reveal moment. A full decade and a half before Kimberly Shaw’s.
Benny’s taking it all in stride, even when new gaffer goes full on Fred Phelps on him. When gravely asked if he ever wrestled with his own conscience, Benny furrowed his brow for a few moments before earnestly replying:
Apologies if they have appeared here before, I couldnt find them
