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Suburban housewife melancholia was the situation behind Butterflies, and the
discontented Ria Parkinson was its endearing if sometimes infuriatingly
irresolute figurehead. Alongside her taciturn dentist husband Ben, and feckless
adult sons Russell and Adam, Ria and her journey through mid-life crisis made
this one of the most popular and resonant sitcoms of its day.
The story's hook was Ria's secretive but platonic 'affair' with businessman
Leonard, who she would meet in public places for walks, lunch and gentle comedy.
To Leonard's chagrin, their relationship never went any further, as Ria's
restlessness and frustration were never enough to surpass her devotion to Ben
and her fear of challenging middle-class morality.
The female focus was typical of writer Carla Lane - whose previous creation,
The Liver Birds (BBC, 1969-79) had established her as a rare woman's voice in TV
sitcom - and in its depiction of women's issues, Butterflies was very much of
its historical moment in the immediate aftermath of the women's liberation
movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, and before the so-called 'backlash'
against feminism in the 1980s. Less incisive was its attempt to illustrate the
lifestyle tension between Ria and her family and their cleaning lady Ruby, whose
occasional appearances and deadpan working-class expressions served to inject
moments of class humour into an otherwise thoroughly bourgeois environment.
The series' title encompasses both Ben's lepidopterist hobby and
Ria's desire for change and liberation, as well as her ruminations on the fragility and
fleetingness of life. For actress Wendy Craig, Ria was a culmination of the
discontented housewife persona she had cultivated across previous television
comedies Not in Front of the Children (BBC, 1967-70) and ...And Mother Makes
Three/Five (ITV, 1971-73; 1974-76), but in its script quality and depth of
character Butterflies marked the zenith of this trend.
The hidden malaise at the heart of the middle-class suburban family has been
a periodic theme in sitcoms since, notably in 2 Point 4 Children (BBC, 1991-99),
while My Family (BBC, 2000-), borrows many of Butterflies' key elements,
including the dentist father and culinarily-challenged mother, but presents a
more post-feminist take on the domestic sitcom. Butterflies was momentarily
revived for a one-off charity special for Children in Need (BBC1, tx.
17/11/2000), which saw little change in the Parkinson family when the cast
gathered for Ria's 60th birthday celebration and a bittersweet reunion between Ria and Leonard.
Hannah Hamad
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1. Worrying about Adam (3:25)
