Cast: Colin Douglas (Edwin Ashton), John McKelvey (Sefton Briggs), Shelagh Fraser (Jean Ashton), Barbara Flynn (Freda Ashton), Leslie Nunnerley (Margaret Ashton), Coral Atkins (Sheila Ashton), Trevor Bowen (Tony Briggs), Keith Drinkel (Philip Ashton), Colin Campbell (David Ashton), David Dixon (Robert Ashton), Patrick Troughton (Henry Porter), Margery Mason (Celia Porter), Ian Thompson (John Porter), John Nettles (Ian Mackenzie) Show full cast and credits
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A Family at War is an epic saga, exploring in detail the minutiae of
daily life during the Second World War as experienced by a working-class
Liverpool family. Designed to encompass the entirety of the conflict, this
ambitious project was made in an almost continuous two-year production period,
but right from its debut it proved an enormous success, with audiences
frequently exceeding 26 million. Sir Denis Forman, then head of Granada, the
show's production company, would later call it "The most cost-effective series
ever made".
Each instalment begins on a specific date and the series spans the period
from August 1938 to December 1945. The central focus is on the Ashton family,
Edwin, his wife Jean and their five children: sensible and reliable Margaret,
self-centred philanderer David, idealistic Philip, amiable Freda and soft-spoken
Robert. Edwin is an ex-miner who, to support his wife and children, swallows his
pride and enlists at the print works owned by Jean's family and run by her
brother, Sefton. Much of the tension in the series arises from their class
conflict.
The brainchild of John Finch who acted as script editor and principal writer
throughout, the series was sometimes mocked for its unrelenting grimness and
solemnity. It is certainly true that practically all the relationships prove to
be tangled and largely unhappy; even the ever-smiling Freda is crushed when she
and her husband (John Nettles) discover they can't have children. However, no
family dynamic was more agonisingly miserable than that of Henry and Celia
Porter, torn apart by Celia's dangerously obsessive fixation on their son John,
Margaret's husband. Patrick Troughton and Margery Mason play their bitter and
distressing exchanges to splenetic perfection.
Although the series does depict the war overseas (with Derbyshire standing in
for Spain, the Fylde Coast near Formby for Egypt's Western Desert and locations
in Llandudno for the North Atlantic), the focus is mainly domestic. Thus,
although Robert and Philip are killed in action, it is Jean's death in 'A
Separate Peace' (tx. 17/2/1971) that is given the greater dramatic prominence,
uniting Edwin and Sefton in grief. In a touching and surprising conclusion, the
final episode sees the two men left to each other's company to face the postwar
world.
The stirring theme music was taken from Vaughan-Williams' Sixth
Symphony.
Sergio Angelini
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1. Farewells (4:03)
