Mrs Dale's Diary
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- The Dales redirects here. For the Yorkshire Dales National Park, see Yorkshire Dales. For the fictional geographical area of the Forgotten Kingdoms, see Dalelands.
Mrs Dale's Diary was the first significant BBC radio serial drama. It was first broadcast on the BBC Light Programme on 5 January 1948, and subsequently transferred to the newly-formed Radio 2 in 1967, where it ran until 25 April 1969. A new episode was broadcast each weekday, firstly in the afternoon, with a repeat on the following morning. The lead character, Mrs Dale, was played by Ellis Powell until she was sacked in controversial circumstances in 1963 and replaced by Jessie Matthews. An innovative characteristic of the programme was that a brief introductory narrative in each episode was read out, spoken by Mrs Dale as if she were writing in her diary.
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[edit] Format
The basic storyline was that of a doctor's wife, Mrs Mary Dale, her husband Jim, and the comings and goings of a fundamentally middle-class society. The Dales lived at Virginia Lodge in the fictional London suburb of Parkwood Hill. They moved there from the real area of Kenton, which straddles the border between the London Boroughs of Brent and Harrow. Later in the series, in an attempt to modernise the programme and its setting, the producers relocated the family in the fictional new town of Exton New Town .
Mrs. Dale's mother was Mrs. Freeman, whom Jim always called, rather gravely, "mother-in-law". The family had one daughter, Gwen, and a son, Bob. Bob, who worked in the motor trade, was married to Jenny, they had twins. Gwen was widowed after her husband David was killed in a water-skiing accident in the Bahamas where he was holidaying with his rich mistress. Mary Dale's sister Sally (whom she always pronounced "Selly") lived in Chelsea and moved in exotic circles. The Dales and their friends (and Captain, Mrs Freeman's cat, apparently named after her late husband's rank when he fell in the First World War) got along together in almost perfect harmony. It was all very respectable, comfortable and middle-class, although one of the characters, an artist named Jago Peters (played by a young Derek Nimmo), had once tried to use a neighbour's Scandinavian au pair as a nude model.
The programme is thought to be the first British mainstream drama which depicted a character known to be homosexual sympathetically in a leading part – Sally's husband. It was an extremely brave move to feature a gay man in the series, especially when it must be considered that homosexuality was still illegal in the United Kingdom then. The way this material was handled contrasted with what was happening elsewhere: for example, the contemporary radio comedy programmes Beyond Our Ken and Round the Horne featured homosexuality as a cause for ribald mirth, as did the Carry On films. Clearly the programme's makers considered the time was right for the subject to be featured. Richard Fulton, however, was quite an odd character to use, in several ways. Not least is that (though apparently based on the homosexual writer Patrick White) Richard's history in the serial was unarguably heterosexual. He was in fact a character who had developed a lot, having been presented in the early days as something of a monster of petulance. In the 'sixties, however, everyone was expected to behave better, as part of the democratisation going on all around.
There is not much archive material extant, as this was one of the programmes regarded as expendable by the BBC, who routinely wiped and re-used tape, hence over 4000 episodes of the show are lost, which is seen as disastrous by historians and scholars of broadcasting.
[edit] Changes To The Format
In February 1962, the serial was renamed The Dales. The linking narratives by Mrs. Dale were dropped at this time. The reason behind the changes was that the BBC were very conscious that the series was considered by the media to be twee and hopelessly old fashioned. The changes included a brand new theme tune composed by Ron Grainer (he was behind the futuristic theme tune for Doctor Who), the new format should have worked.
[edit] Scandal
In 1963 Ellis Powell was dropped from the role of Mary Dale. She was very bitter, and said a lot to the press. The state of her health probably affected the whole situation, as she died very soon afterwards.
The following year, Frank Marcus's play "The Killing of Sister George" opened in London, starring - as did the later film - Beryl Reid. The situation featured, of an actress who loses her part in a long-running serial, clearly has connections with the controversy over sacking Ellis Powell. "Sister George", however, was not replaced - her character was literally killed off, a far more common situation for an actor.
The new Mrs Dale was announced as Jessie Matthews. Lord Olivier, who adored "The Dales" (indeed he was a fan of British soap opera per se, and always expressed a desire to appear in Coronation Street, a wish that was never fulfilled) referred to Jessie Matthews being cast as Mrs Dale as "The most wonderful example of mis-casting in the history of the profession".[citation needed]
In its last few years, "The Dales" became more sensationalist. Mrs Dale became a local councillor, a position she had to relinquish when she caused a man's death by careless driving. A heart attack forced Dr Dale to retire from practice. Perhaps the most famous storyline was Jenny getting measles; listeners wrote in their thousands, complaining that she had already had measles in 1949.
When it became "The Dales", the show did try to copy The Archers, which was originally set up primarily as a medium to disseminate information to the agricultural community, and to give an insight into rural affairs to the general public. Thus medical stories became the order of the day in The Dales, Doctor Jim Dale no longer being a private doctor but a member of a group practice in the NHS. In this manner, The Dales became in the mid 1960s very much like the current BBC One soap opera Doctors, with the plots revolving around medical conditions and problems. When the series ran a storyline about the importance of women having regular cervical smear tests and checking their breasts for lumps, the then junior health minister praised the programme, saying that it had encouraged thousands of women to see their doctors.
The series ran for 5,531 episodes, culminating with the engagement of Mrs Dale's daughter Gwen to a famous TV professor on April 25, 1969. On news of its demise, Liberal party MP Peter Bessell attempted to introduce a reprieve for the series in Parliament.
The phrase avidly seized upon by caricaturists as typical of Mrs. Dale's narrative was "I'm rather worried about Jim...". . Indeed, the phrase was a staple of many "comedy" programmes, radio and television, in the early Sixties aiming to poke fun at safe, staid and undemanding middle-class lifestyles. In particular, this was the basis of Mrs Wilson's Diary in the fortnightly satirical magazine Private Eye. The writers (primarily John Wells) presented Mrs Wilson as seeing herself as comfortably middle class, in contrast to the working class pretensions as opposed to middle class actuality of her husband, for example the Wincarnis (a brand of tonic wine) and the worsted suits with two pairs of trousers (Wilson was from Huddersfield, a town famous for the manufacture of worsted cloth).
The last line of the last episode was "I shall always worry about Jim..."
[edit] Trivia
- A famous send-up was the Nineteen Eighty-Five episode of The Goon Show in which mention is made of Mrs Dale's Real Diary:
- Seagoon: I want to read it. What's it called?
- Bluebottle: It's called Mrs Dale's Real Diary.
- Seagoon: Mrs Dale's...?? Heavens -- would the BBC stop at nothing? So this was how they kept the masses from thinking.
- Bluebottle: Eheehee! Look at this page! Eheehee! It's a Three-D picture of Mrs Dale in her nightshirt being chased by Richard Dimblebee... Eheehee! Eheeheehee! Eheeheeoooooughhhh... pauses to wipe drool off chin.
- Also, The History of Pliny the Elder episode of The Goon Show:
- Seagoon: Fear not! We shall fight them up hill and down Mrs Dale!
- The programme was often a 'target' (albeit an affectionate one) on the BBC Radio comedy Round The Horne, the show being referred to as "Mrs Dire's Dreary" with the part of Mrs Dire being played by Kenneth Williams!
