It becomes particularly obvious what a high quality series D4 is when you hit the rare dud. This one, from 11 March 1974, has all the ingredients - great cast (Keith Eden, Sheila Florance, Norman Kaye, Jon Finlayson, David Jon, and others) possibly even on paper a decent storyline, almost. But the way the whole is played for comedy (why? why?!) and the type of hamfisted comedy... jeepers. When you consider how many incredibly good, tightly scripted, brilliantly acted episodes they made in '73-'74, well, obviously, there have to be winners and losers. But a flour fight under a hose? Thanks but no thanks.
Possibly the D4 world just wasn't sure how it felt about hot shot property developers and/or the inner city, still in this episode the habitat of old battlers and eccentrics. In this episode some heavies are employed at arm's length by an effete developer who won't actually have the money he needs to buy all the land he's bought for his new high-rise towers until he scores one holdout house, The Briars, owned (sort of) by an elderly lady called Miss Bobby. (I say elderly and perhaps the character is but Sheila Florance was... gulp... younger than I am now, when this show was made).
The final moment of the show depicts a model of the Briars next to the extensive property development* and we are told that 'Miss Bobby is still living in her house which is now in the centre of a shopping complex,' no doubt a reference to the poor lady in real life who held out against the sale of her home in Camberwell Junction and had people looking into her backyard for years as they went into Target. The model we are shown while hearing these words does not match the description of a house in a shopping centre but oh well. That's the least of anyone's worries with this silly farce. Such a waste.
* Which btw implies that the developer actually got his way, which is odd, as he went to prison in the story.
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