The Cabin in the Clearing

The Cabin in the Clearing (BBC, 1954) was billed as “a television play in five episodes,” a description that neatly captures both its theatrical ambitions and its episodic tension. Produced by Rex Tucker and adapted by Felix Fenton and Susan Ashman from a novel by the prolific American writer Edward Sylvester Ellis, the serial starred Shaun Sutton alongside Peggy Mount (The Larkins), Shaw Taylor (Police 5) and Ewan Solon (Maigret). Each 30-minute episode was broadcast live at 5pm, beginning on Tuesday 16 February 1954, under the BBC’s Children’s Television banner.

Set around the year 1800, the story unfolds in the Ohio wilderness at a moment of fragile coexistence between white settlers and Native American tribes, specifically the Shawnee and Miami. Into this contested territory come Silas Sutherland (Sutton), his wife Polly (Mount) and their daughter Alice (Ann Hanslip - The Cheaters), who carve out a precarious existence by building a log cabin with little more than determination and hard labour. The drama hinges on a stark frontier dilemma: when rumours of an uprising reach isolated settlers, should they fortify their homes and fight, or flee to the safety of a distant blockhouse, abandoning everything they have built? Silas Sutherland is forced to confront this choice when conflict becomes unavoidable.

The opening episode, Friends and Family, immediately establishes the threat, with the Radio Times evoking a sense of imminent danger as the Miami and Shawnee “dig up the hatchet.” Subsequent instalments escalate the peril. In Besieged, the Sutherlands are trapped in their cabin while Chief Haw-hu-da’s Shawnee warriors gather outside, their only hope resting on help from fifty miles away. Unknown to the attackers, two figures linger in the forest: Brayton Ripley (Derek Aylward - The Newcomers), a young woodsman and family friend, and Mul-keep-mo (Solon), a Miami Indian whose life Ripley once saved. Ordeal by Fire raises the stakes further, as the cabin is threatened by flames and the family’s servant Scipio (Charles Swain) is taken prisoner. By A Desperate Plan, the Sutherlands resolve to fight to the bitter end, a resolve that leads into the final episode, The Break-Out, for which no surviving synopsis exists.

Contemporary press coverage suggested a serial rich in incident and atmosphere. TV Mirror promised “plenty of excitement,” highlighting additional frontier figures such as the hunter Simon Kenton (Tony Van Bridge) and expanding on the hazardous world of forest skirmishes and uneasy alliances. While the language and attitudes of the time are very much of their era, the serial’s emphasis on courage, loyalty and survival made it a natural fit for its young audience.

Behind the scenes, The Cabin in the Clearing is notable for the later careers of its key personnel. Shaun Sutton, already moving into prominence within BBC television drama, would go on to become Head of Serials and play a crucial, if unofficial, role in shaping Doctor Who, including overseeing the transition from William Hartnell to Patrick Troughton. Rex Tucker, the producer here, was also instrumental in the early development of that same landmark series. The serial itself was broadcast live and, like so many BBC productions of the period, appears never to have been telerecorded. All five episodes are believed lost.

Its reputation was strong enough to prompt a remake in 1959, running from 14 January to 1 February, and featuring returning cast members Ann Hanslip, Derek Aylward and Ewan Solon alongside newcomers Patrick Troughton and John Woodnutt. Today, The Cabin in the Clearing survives only in listings and reviews, but it remains an evocative example of early 1950s BBC children’s drama: earnest, tense, and rooted in a vision of history that prized moral choices as much as frontier adventure.