The First Churchills

The First Churchills
Genre History
Starring Susan Hampshire
John Neville
John Standing
Robert Robinson
Country of origin UK
Language(s) English
No. of seasons 1
No. of episodes 12
Production
Running time 50 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel BBC
Original run 27 September 1969 – 13 December 1969

The First Churchills was a BBC serial from 1969 about the life of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough and his wife, Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough. It starred John Neville as the duke and Susan Hampshire as the duchess, was written and produced by Donald Wilson, and was directed by David Giles.

The serial presents the lives of John and Sarah Churchill from their meeting in 1673 until a time shortly before the first duke's death in 1722, and shows, along the way, much of the context of English politics at the same time. Like many BBC serials of the era, it was made on a low production budget, with sound studio sets, and generally avoided battle and crowd scenes out of inability to stage them in a convincing manner. The series is based on the Marlboroughs' famous descendant Winston Churchill's life of his ancestor the Duke, and as such presents a very favourable portrait of the Marlboroughs.

The closing credits theme is the second piece, a Rondeau, of Henry Purcell's incidental music, composed about 1695, to Aphra Behn's 1676 play Abdelazer, or The Moor's Revenge.

Cast

The serial depicts most of the important political figures of the day:

DVD

The DVD for this drama is available now, distributed by Acorn Media UK.

External links