From the first swoosh of lace skirt and bare legs backed by a rocking theme tune - "I'm dressed in lace, and it's twelve below zero, I'm blue in the face but I'm out with my hero, so,I'm putting on the show" - this rag trade family drama had it all - sex, fashion, glamour, grit, double-dealing and style.
Connie comes back from several years of sunning herself in Greece, blags a ride from a flash businessman at the airport, uses him for a meal and some new clothes, then - with the handsome businessman still breathlessly in tow, his marriage crashing around his ears - she heads back north to take her business back from her less glamorous sister, her mother ("I always wear black - I hate the colour but people remember me as the bitch in black") and her stepfather. She steals her sister's sexy black fashion lecturer boyfriend ("He does a great horizontal samba"), learns how to work the town hall planning system, romances the local Mr Big and sends her father's bit on the side in her place when he asks her to pay in kind, and generally causes havoc. The only person who can out-think her is her stepfather Hector. A sub-plot concerns pyramid selling ("Good afternoon mugs - well you are, aren't you, or you'd already be out there making money for yourselves" - and still she sells them the franchise, aided by an off the shoulder white dress and lashings of sex appeal). The series ends with Connie getting back on the plane (with her own boyfriend) for Greece to rest and recuperate, with the promise of her returning without him, relaxed and dangerous again - but she never did. She went to be Sable Colby in the Dynasty series in America where she was just as glamorous but never remotely as dangerous as in the wilds of the Northern rag trade.
Why oh why is there no video or DVD so I can watch it again? It never even plays on cable and it was really excellent, an English Dynasty cum Sex-and-the-City. Please, somebody, make it available...http://www.simplystephaniebeacham.com/Connie/Connie.html has photos and details of the theme.
