 The Grove Family
1 9 5 4 - 1 9 5 7 (UK)
138 x 20 minute episodes
1954 was an important year for British soap opera fans with the
arrival of the fifties equivalent of EastEnders, The Grove Family.
Named after the BBCs Lime Grove studios, The Grove Family
was Britain's first soap for adults. The first twenty minute story
went to air on Friday 2 April at 7:50 pm and showed a lower-middle
class couple who'd worked hard to build a home for themselves and
their family after the war and were just beginning to feel comfortably
off after years of hardship.
By the end of the year the Groves had
built up a following of nearly 9 million people - a quarter of the
population - and was second in popularity only to Ask Pickles.
The Grove family consisted of: Dad (Bob), a jolly although
sometimes harassed, jobbing builder; Mum (Gladys), a warm and
forthright housewife; 12-year-old Lenny, bright but a fibber;
14-year-old Daphne; Pat, a 20-year old assistant librarian; Jack, who
was doing National Service; and Grandma who was always complaining:
"I'm starved for want of nourishment".
Viewers of all ages wrote angry letters to the BBC about the
atrociously ungrateful Gran; asked for estimates for building work
from Bob Grove; advised Gladys about slimming, Jack about his
girlfriends and Pat about her admirers. They held their breath when
actress Ruth Dunning was rushed to hospital with appendicitis. The
show even had royal patronage. On a visit to the studios, the Queen
Mother declared herself a fan, calling the family "so English, so
real".
Then suddenly in June 1957 the series was scrapped after a row
between the BBC and the father and son writing team of Roland and
Michael Pertwee. Exhausted from three years of writing, the Pertwees
wanted a break and asked instead whether they could oversee the
scripts of other writers. The BBC wouldn't agree to this, hired new
writers but then axed the Groves altogether.
Michael Pertwee later reflected: "The people at the BBC then didn't
have the foresight, the commercial sense, to see what the people
making Coronation Street saw - that these series can go through
quiet spells but they can survive and last and be important".
It was a sad end for the Groves. Edward Evans and Ruth Dunning
never again achieved such stardom. Only Christopher Beeny prospered,
as the accident-prone under-butler in Upstairs Downstairs and
the gormless nephew in the funeral parlour comedy In Loving Memory.
All that remains of The Grove Family is a short film. No
copies of the series exist.
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