LARKRISE: Beautifully gentle, heartwarming TV
I first came across ‘Larkrise to Candleford’ when my mother got a part as the feisty field worker Lizzy in a community production at the local arts centre. It was in the early eighties and directed by Steve Addison a fore-runner of a community education director and was produced as a ‘promenade production’* featuring local people either volunteering at the Arts Centre or keen amateur theatre folk who had responded to an ‘Ad’ for an open audition in the local paper. The Arts Centre, which was little more than a de-consecrated church that had been stripped of its pews and altar etc. and lights hung from a single scaffold frame in the centre, made an evocative setting. It was magical; the story, the production, the cast, the whole thing.
Years later, I discovered an uncle kept a framed copy of a national review in their loo, such was their delight to discover a pre-production publicity shot of the whole cast, including my mother dressed in rural ‘labourer’ garb sporting scythes and ancient farming implements. I went away, read all the books by Flora Thompson I could get my hands on and bribed my mate Ian who had also been in it and was destined for RADA to take me on a field trip in his Ford Cortina to the flat, but rich, earthy plains of Oxfordshire – the setting for the stories Larkrise and Candleford. We walked from Juniper Hill after reading the tombstones in the churchyard to Fringford, the inspiration for Candleford and the memories stay with me (despite the fact that Ian was also teaching me photography and I took dozens of black and white photos which I learnt how to develop myself and subsequently have lost somewhere, somehow). And all this is why I would have been reluctant to watch any TV production, wary of having the warm happiness of memory spoilt by miscasting or poor production values and unsympathetic scripting. As it was, I came across the first episode by chance and was mesmerised, not at first even realising, I was watching part of the Larkrise to Candleford story. I haven’t missed an episode since. Great cast, a visual feast and wonderful adaptation. I particularly enjoyed the ‘ghost’ episode, haunting and beautifully gentle – a rare achievement for a TV production – well done Team Larkrise – excellent effort. More please.
*where the audience and actors mingle, moving round the performance space.