UK / BBC One / 1×95 minute episode / Broadcast 31 December 1986
Writer: Gillian Freeman / Story: On the Western Circuit by Thomas Hardy / Music: Rick Wakeman / Executive Producer: Bill Kenwright / Producer: Louis Marks / Director: Anthony Simmons
Period drama. The story of a simple, passionate, yet illiterate young housemaid, Anna, in Victorian rural England. She’s seduced by a young London barrister she meets at a country fair.
Anna’s elegant, sophisticated mistress, Edith, is trapped in a loveless, childless marriage to an autocratic businessman, Arthur, whose sister runs the household. Edith consents to ghost-write the maid’s love letters to the barrister. As Edith pours out her own fantasies in the letters, they become increasingly lyrical and intimate.
Through their correspondence, she falls in love with the barrister and he, in turn, believes the letter writer is the perky housemaid…
cast
Hannah Gordon as Edith
Kenneth Haigh as Arthur
Anna Massey as Letty
Martyn Stanbridge as Charles
Sammi Davis as Anna
Roy Holder as Jim Jane Gurnett as Grace
Sophie Thursfield as Sarah
Jonathan Adams as Parnell
Veronica Clifford as Cook
Peter Martin as Groom
Brian Hogg as Postman
Geoffrey Greenhill as Bridges
Richard Huggett as Registrar
John Baskcomb as Solicitor
Dominic Lefoe as Elderly Barrister
Maria St Clare as Vicar’s Wife
Elizabeth Hunt as Dressmaker
Dave Chatterley as Musician At Wedding
Mike Sargeant as Musician At Wedding
