Widows
1 9 8 3 (UK)
1 9 8 5 (UK)
 12
x 50 minute episodes
As an actress, Lynda La Plante appeared on British television
in several well-known crime series of the late 1970s and early
1980s, including The Sweeney and The Gentle Touch.
Usually typecast as either a prostitute or a gangsters' moll,
La Plante's experience of television acting not only ensured that
she was grounded in the narrative dynamics of the British Crime
Series, but was also made only too aware of the subordinate role
generally assigned to female characters in the genre.
Having written for her own pleasure since her childhood, La
Plante began to write and submit her own scripts for various
current Police Series, scripts which attempted to create roles for
women which were much more intelligible, independent and less
subordinate to men.
As fate would have it, one of her scripts, entitled The
Women, ended up on the desk of producer Verity Lambert at
Euston Films at a time when she and her colleague Linda Agran were
consciously looking for television dramas which would feature
women both at the centre of events and the action.
The Women became the series Widows which was
broadcast to great public acclaim in 1983 and which was to
transform La Plante's career from actress to television dramatist.
The undisputed star of Widows was Dolly Rawlins, who
returned in 1994 in She's Out. Dolly, a crook's wife,
learns that her husband's last job (robbing a security van) has
gone wrong and he has been killed along with most of his
gang.
Dolly decides to recruit the wives of her husband's gang into
taking on the job themselves, learning the ins and outs of the
criminal world as they do.
The women pull off the crime but Widows 2 (which
followed two years later) saw the girls in a desperate struggle to
hold onto their ill gotten gains whilst the third serial She's
Out (after a gap of ten years) had Dolly Rawlins coming out of
prison determined to get revenge on the people who put her
there.
Without giving too much away there was also a surprise in store
for Dolly concerning her husband.
An American miniseries version of Widows was produced in
2002 featuring Brooke Shields, Rosie Perez, Mercedes Ruehl and N-Bushe
Wright.
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