21 October - 23 December 1980
3368 - 3395
How do you solve a problem like Alison? This is the very question being asked by everyone. Including, I kid you not, an order of nuns.
Her pregnancy was written off with a convenient miscarriage. As mentioned in my previous post, I feel this is the “safe” option for the series, and quite an obvious one. I’d genuinely like to have seen Alison and Reg living with the consequences of Alison’s original sin.
That said, the way the series dealt with it has not been without impact. Alison’s quiet, factual proclamation “The baby’s gone” gave me a physical reaction (my stomach lurched) because it hadn’t felt like the scene was going to take this direction. The sense of calm made it appear the crisis was over and things were fine. There’s also been the question of Reg’s culpability for his part in causing the accident. It’s been enjoyably vague. We know what happened and they know what’s happened, and everyone’s just learning to live with it without diving deep into navel gazing.
Alison has re-emerged as a more sympathetic character, not directly because of the miscarriage itself, but as an outcome of the story moving on to a different phase of her journey. The latest conquest comes from her having heard the voice of God and being called, quite literally, to serve him as a nun. And a Roman Catholic nun, to boot. It’s the final insult for Reg who feels betrayed at her leaving both him and his faith. And it’s all too much for poor Benny who has gone off to visit his gran and to look for his traveller friends.
Exploration into faith is a fascinating thing when done well, and that’s the case here. Following her burning bush moment, a nun comes to the farm after a supply of cracked eggs and unwanted veg to “recycle” (how very progressive and green). I’m unclear of this nun’s motives. She certainly annoys Reg with her persistence and her lack of respect for his wishes for him to stay away from his property. She keeps barging her way in - insisting she’s more concerned with God’s wishes than Reg’s - and she glides through every scene with a permanent smile that makes her seem more arrogant than radiant. All the same, her first scene is a terrific one for Alison - at night in the darkened farm kitchen - as Alison opens her heart about pretty much everything, from Chris and the loss of the baby to her confusion over her faith.
We’ve gone with her to the convent as she explores the possibilities with Mother Mary Peter, and she bonds with a young nun, Sister Celestine, who at one point randomly produces a guitar and begins strumming as they speak. It’s difficult not to think of Maria Von Trapp. Or that scene in
Airplane!
After Reg persuades the predatory nurse to return in an attempt to keep Alison in the real world, Celestine is excited to hear about his proposal. “Is it the first time?” she asks Alison who lies that it is, apparently forgetting both about predatory nurse’s previous proposal and Benny’s more recent one.
Running through her list of annoyances at the convent, Sister Celestine mentions another nun who sniffs all the time. I wonder what she’d make of Iris. Whenever there’s a scene where she’s supposed to be upset, or pretending to be upset, or has been out in the rain, or is attempting to look casual while doing housework, the actress sniffs her way through the scenes. And I mean a LOT. It gets very wearing, so I’m with Celestine all the way.
Iris has continued to cause trouble by leaving home and insinuating her way into Marian’s home in order to seduce Glenda’s Kevin (not that he took much convincing to hop into bed with the little skank) and then telling Glenda all about it.
If Iris’s story has done anything, it’s shown the growth that Glenda herself has undergone since her earliest days on the series where she was stealing jewellery and threatening colleagues and running away from home. Iris is essentially who Glenda was four years previously (so perhaps there’s hope for the one with the lockdown fringe). Indeed, Iris’s disappearance after it all blew up raised the ghost of Glenda’s disappearance and sexual assault with all the Brownlows, including Glenda herself. Glenda and Kath - as well as Marion and Kevin - meet Iris’s betrayal and troublemaking with nothing but kindness, and it threatens to melt her icy heart.
Only Arthur has the sense to see Iris for what she is and not to kowtow to her. Naturally, this causes him to be viewed by the women in his life as an old grouch, but frankly I don’t see it. If anyone’s reaction is bonkers it’s that of Kath who worships Iris and flagellates Arthur for not doing the same. There’s some misandry to the proceedings, with a touch of the characters (and perhaps the writers), tutting dismissively about “men” here the same way they have about Reg while saying almost nothing about Alison’s constant hypocrisy.
Over at Chimneys, Jill’s had quite the catalogue of men on the go, with some crossover here and there. First came the randy TV repairman (she threw him out the morning after). Then there’s the businessman who had a long-term girlfriend that Jill didn’t care about. And Adam Chance is also back on the horizon.
Jill stealing Tom from Rita has been fascinating. There’s been a sense of her engineering their arguments, inviting them to Chimneys to discuss marriage, knowing it will end in tears because Rita wants it almost as desperately as Tom doesn’t. And as soon as Rita stormed out (I mean, literally seconds later), Jill swooped in.
Particularly ugly has been her treatment of Rita in the wake of things. She told her in clipped, accusatory tones that Tom isn’t Rita’s concern anymore, so Jill fails to understand why Rita is so het up. This is the following morning… hours after Tom and Rita’s quarrel where no separation was mentioned! Making things more soapily dramatic, Rita is now an employee, being the latest efficient little secretary working at the motel, and Jill is being overly critical of Rita’s performance, tearing strips off her for every little error as she learns the ropes.
Satisfyingly, Jill’s hypocrisy is at least acknowledged. There are sour grapes because Meg didn’t ask Jill herself to take on the secretarial role, but Meg, Sandy and Adam acknowledge amongst themselves that Jill’s performance is dire of late. The reason for this - and presumably her promiscuity and nasty tongue - is her current
Valley Of The Dolls storyline. She’s popping sedatives and sloshing booze like they’re going out of fashion. It’s great fun.
Raymond Hillier is back. Except he’s not, because he’s now Walter Fallon. This, too, is great fun because it’s not a case of a returning actor playing a different character. It’s a returning actor playing the same character with a new name. The reasoning behind this is that now he’s no longer undercover, he can use his real name. All the same, it was enough to temporarily confuse my partner who’d missed perhaps half a dozen episodes and so missed the name business being cleared up. It seems Walter Fallon is as sneaky as Raymond Hillier, because he’s now pulling strings to try and obtain some shares in the motel.
But even more fun than this was the drop-in shot for episode #3393 which was a scene between Walter and Adam. It’s always fun to see behind-the-scenes, and what the cast do while they’re waiting for their cue. Philip Voss stayed mostly in character, but threw out a quip about this being his “action pose” for which he charges more. The scene is brought to a halt by someone (director or stage manager, one assumes), because he realises he’s cued Philip in either on the wrong part of the script or on an earlier draft which has been changed. I was hugely impressed that as soon as he was given the correct opening words, Philip was able to go straight to that part of the scene without even thinking about it. His memory for dialogue retention filled me with awe, especially knowing how quickly things turned around. But there was a moment where he faltered and apparently mixed up two different scenes causing him to stop and hiss the very non-ATV-at-teatime utterance “shit”. Tony Adams seemed to find the whole thing hilarious, collapsing with laughter as Philip was trying to get his dialogue straight. It does look like these two were getting a little fun out of a very strict shooting schedule.
My guess is that, even though the series was probably still filmed “as live” at this late point, technology made it easier to edit a re-shot part of a scene into an existing one that had been fluffed or needed to be changed. They seem to have been a rarity since there are only two drop-ins plus two re-takes on the entire set. Or perhaps they were more common but most have been wiped. If anyone (
@James from London, perhaps) has any information about drop-ins I’d love to know more.
From Crossroads Fan Club - with thanks and some nice footage and photos
Thanks for this. It's terribly sad to see this while watching the series filmed in that very studio and so full of life.
