Send Foster

Johnny Foster is a junior reporter on the Redstone Chronicle, a job that introduces him to some interesting people, some funny and some frightening.

Johnny was played by Hayward Morse, son of British actor Barry Morse who was familiar to viewers at that time as the police officer chasing after Richard Kimble in The Fugitive. Interviewed for the TV Times in 1966, Foster said "I always wanted to be an actor, but if I thought I'd get as much fun out of life as Johnny does I might have given journalism a go."

Hayward said of his character: "As a cub reporter he gets sent on all the so-called dull jobs. But they often turn into really big stories. He runs a 1932 Morris which is the love of his life. That's been the hardest part for me personally. It's meant I've had to learn to drive."

Send Foster also starred Patrick Newell (The New Avengers) as the Chronicle's crusty chief reporter Mr. Harding and Polly James (The Liver Birds) as Susan, the girl who runs the newspaper's front office. Guest stars during the series' run included Clive Dunn, Garfield Morgan, Patsy Rowland and Brian Wilde.

The series also boasted some top class writers such as George Markstein and Victor Pemberton.

Episodes varied from the light-hearted, as in the case when he gets involved with the local pop scene, to the socially significant as in The Drama Critic in which a visit to a village amateur dramatic club seems like a boring assignment for our intrepid reporter. However, when he wields a savage pen, trouble follows, and Johnny learns not only about other people but about what sort of person he wants to be.  The series certainly didn't shy away from sensitive subjects and tackled racial inequality in one episode, I'm Not Coloured-I'm Black, in which Johnny finds that a colour bar is operating in Redstone and goes undercover as a waiter to expose it.

In an era when children's television filled the late afternoon schedules Send Foster was one of five new children's programmes starting the same week; 1 - 7 July 1967.

Published on July 1st, 2020. Written by Laurence Marcus for Television Heaven.