A Horseradish
Tuesday 21st October 2014 12:16pm [Edited]
8,475 posts
Finding "Marriage Lines" on R4E fairly interesting. Richard Briers and Prunella Scales as newlyweds in 1965 sounding much like Richard Briers and Prunella Scales in subsequent decades. No bad thing, given their class, but young didn't sound young in those days any more than young sounded old. It just sounded ordinary.
I believe the programme had been on TV before radio, airing as early as 1961. Both versions were written
by Brian Barton-Chapple or Richard Waring as he was more commonly known. Waring, who was prolific in
the 60s and 70s, went on to produce "Not in Front of the Children" and other series starring Wendy Craig.
Which leads me to the frequent use in "Marriage Lines" of the dramatic pause. Perhaps it is partially in the acting as well as the writing but it hints of what was to come in other writers. I think I can hear in the half-listening "whats" an early clue to Carla Lane who would later write "Butterflies" which also starred Craig.
But there is especially a similarity with Simon Brett's "After Henry" to the extent that Scales's character could be the same, albeit older. So maybe Brett too took "Marriage Lines" as a cue to some of his technique.