Daughters of the Vicar

Daughters of the Vicar

1966 - United Kingdom

England - 1910. The daughters of the Rev. Ernest Lindley (John Welsh) are expected to marry mates of their own class, breeding and education. Confined to the vicarage, they are unable to meet a selection of such men. The vicarage is a cheerless, cold comfort prison in a North Nottinghamshire mining community, the vicar a colourless, unhappy figure whose wife (Marie Hopps) is a waspish invalid. They are regarded with contempt by their hard-working parishioners. There are two daughters of the vicar. Mary, the elder (played by Petra Davies) is submissive and dutiful, prepared for her ordained marriage to the unprepossessing curate, a timid, coldly inhuman intellectual (played by Robin Parkinson). But Louisa, the younger (Judi Dench), is more wilful, more determined, more modern and scandalises the vicarage by her interest in Alfred Durant, a rough but kindly and alive miner (William Holmes). 

Location scenes for Daughters of the Vicar were shot at Little Lever in Lancashire, three miles from Bolton. "Curiously," said Petra Davies, "we found that a foundation stone on the church there bore the name Lindley, the surname of the characters in the play." Daughters of the Vicar was adapted for television by Peter Eckersley and shown as part of a series of ITV plays entitled The Stories of D. H. Lawrence broadcast at 9.40pm on Monday 10 January, 1966. 

Published on June 12th, 2019. Written by Based on original TV Times article and adapted for Television Heaven.

Read Next...

The Green Hornet

Created for the radio in 1936 by 'Lone Ranger' inventor George W. Trendle and writer Fran Striker, the Green Hornet aka Britt Reid was originally introduced as the son of Dan Reid, the masked man's nephew.

Also released in 1966

How! Southern TV series

How do you get a ship in a bottle? How did a medieval knight, laden with armour, mount his horse? How do non-stick saucepans stay non-stick?

Also released in 1966

Seaspray

Australian series about a widowed father travelling the Southern Pacific seas with his two sons, daughter and a deckhand.

Also released in 1966

Freedom in September

A Soviet musician is missing from his hotel. He wanders through 1962 London trying to contact people he has met and known in Russia. Who are these people? What lies behind his desperate search?

Also tagged Single Play

A man is called back to Glasgow after his estranged wife goes missing, only to find himself accused of her murder

Also starring Petra Davies

Dumb Martian

Earthman Duncan Weaver on a solo tour of duty on one of Jupiter's moons buys a Martian woman as a companion. He mistreats her, assuming her to be just a "dumb Martian." He learns, to his cost, that she has more intelligence than he gives her credit for.

Also tagged Single Play

A Fine Romance

BAFTA Award winning comedy starring Judy Dench and her real-life husband Michael Williams, who play an unlikely couple that come together to form an unmarried union.

Also starring Judi Dench

The Major Barbara

"The greatest of our evils and the worst of our crimes is poverty, and our first duty, to which every other consideration should be sacrificed is not to be poor."

Also starring Judi Dench