Brendon Chase

Brendon Chase

1980 - United Kingdom

Filmed on location (mainly) in the New Forest and around the Hampshire town of Porchester, Brendon Chase ran for 13 episodes between December 1980 and March 1981. It was a typical example of the high quality and high output of children's drama that commercial television excelled in for many years. 

The story takes place around 1925 and centres round the Hensman boys, Robin (Craig McFarlane), John (Howard Taylor) and Harold (Paul Erangey), who are spending their summer holiday away from their boarding school and living in the country house of their aunt Ellen (Rosalie Crutchley). With romantic notions of living life in the forest as outlaws they take off for the woods of Brendon Chase where they must fend for themselves, fighting off the natural dangers of living life rough and occasionally foraging into town for food whilst avoiding the local villagers who have by now formed a search party for the errant adolescents. Also helping the search is the local vicar (played by Christopher Biggins), the local policeman PS Bunting (Michael Robbins) and intrepid reporter Monica Hurling (Liza Goddard). The boys are not entirely alone the whole time and occasionally encounter some of the forests other residents such as Smokoe Joe (Paul Curran), who shares his secrets of the forest with them enabling the children to survive through the summer until (by the last episode) the autumn, when they are finally reunited with their spinster aunt. 

The production staff went to great lengths to get a period feel for the drama and even altered road markings, removed roof aerials and repainted front doors, in Porchester, in order to recreate the 1920s. The original story was written by writer and artist, 'BB' (Denys Watkins-Pitchford who decided that his proper name was too long and unwieldy), and first published in 1944 and was adapted for television by James Andrew Hall. A paperback version was published at the same time as the series was televised but the TV version has never been made available on video or DVD. 

Published on November 30th, 2018. Written by Laurence Marcus for Television Heaven.

Read Next...

Children's Ward

Award-winning teenage drama set in the children's ward of a bustling metropolitan hospital. The show expertly portrays the ups and downs of life in an environment filled with illness and uncertainty

Also tagged Teenage Drama Series

The Baker Street Boys

Based on a group of street urchins whom Conan Doyle recruited on behalf of Holmes to perform various missions, take messages, search London following clues and going to places where the detective himself could not.

Also tagged Teenage Drama

One Summer

Two youths run away Liverpool for the hills and valleys of Wales only to find it's not the peaceful and idyllic life they expected.

Also tagged Childrens Drama Series

The Flaxton Boys

This fondly remembered epic children’s drama created by Sid Waddell, set over four series, each featuring a different generation of the Flaxton boys, was inspired by a lunch-time meeting in a pub and an offer that an upcoming writer couldn't refuse.

Also tagged Teenage Drama

The Secret Garden

A ten year-old orphaned girl is sent to live with an uncle she has never met.

Also tagged Childrens Drama Series

Flight of the Heron

Epic period drama made by Scottish Television and based on D.K. Broster's 1925 novel centred round fictional events at the time of the non-fictional Jacobite Rebellion of 1746 and leading up to the battle of Culloden.

Also tagged Teenage Drama

The Guardians

Co-created by Rex Firkin and Vincent Tilsley, The Guardians was one of the first drama series to get its hands dirty with the soiled laundry of the political and social fall-out of the late 1960s.

Also tagged Teenage Drama Series

The Intruder

Sixteen-year-old Arnold Haithwaite is an orphan who lives with a man he calls father. His world is turned upside down the day a stranger arrives claiming to be the real Arnold Haithwaite. And so begins an intriguing and atmospheric series which involves the search for truth

Also tagged Teenage Drama Series

The Georgian House

Eerie teenage drama series with a time-travel context.

Also tagged Childrens Drama Series