Love for Lydia

LOVE FOR LYDIA is a leisurely paced and meticulous miniseries of the old school. It's based on a semi-autobiographical novel by H. E. Bates and chronicles the lives of several young adults in the mid-1920s in a small town in the north of England.

Lydia Aspen (Mel Martin) is at first a shy and awkward young heiress who comes to town to live with her old maiden aunts (Beatrix Lehmann, Rachel Kempson) and the brutish uncle (Michael Aldridge) in their isolated mansion. The Bates character, Edward Richardson (Christopher Blake), is sent to interview the reclusive aunts on the death of their brother (Lydia's father). The aunts take a shine to the shy young man and encourage him to take Lydia out (ice skating, local dances). Of course the boy is instantly smitten with Lydia, but she is not quite what she seems and as she comes into her own, we find that she is willful, eccentric, and more than a little cruel.

The series is about more than the fumblings of young love. It's also a sharp look the British social norms of 100 years ago. The Aspens are a socially untouchable family in their stone mansion. Their isolation is broken only by trips to church. There's not really a "middle class" at this time in England, but Richardson represents a working class that has some education and upward mobility, as opposed to the "laborers" in the system who are uneducated and simply grind away at their menial jobs. Richardson and his group are just as snobbish to their underlings as Lydia is to Richardson's group.

The cast includes a very young Jeremy Irons as Richardson's friend Alex, who spends all his time drinking and roaring about in his roadster. There's also a farm family (Peter Davison, Sherrie Hewson) who have gone through the school system. Beneath them is the brooding Blackie (Ralph Arliss) who works as an auto mechanic and part-time driver. Among this group, we see rivalries for Lydia, love won, love lost, and the changing fortunes of all as we head toward the Great Depression.

Don't be fooled. This is not a sappy love story. This is a complex story with complex characters. It's an achingly beautiful look lives intertwined.

Issued as a DVD set many years ago. I don't believe this has ever been "restored" or issued on Blu-ray.

Evensford is based on the town of Rushden in Northamptonshire. It grew up as a boot and shoe town in the late nineteenth century. Sadly the boot and shoe industry has mostly gone and many of the factories demolished or developed into flats. Rushden is in the midlands of England not the North and has a distinct accent that none of the actors bothered to copy. Bates captured the rural/urban nature of Evensford perfectly and this series does well with this too. The Aspens are not upper class; they have money and live in a large house in extensive grounds but these things do not raise them into the highest stratum of English society. A reader of the novel visiting Rushden today would still be able to find many of the places Bates wrote about such as, Caldecott, Knuston, Souldrop and Rushden Hall. The Prince Albert hotel still stands. It was the Queen Victoria hotel in Bates's time and is now converted to flats. The railway no longer runs but the station is there and sells a good pint of ale.

This excellent series was brought to American TV audiences on PBS' "Masterpiece Theatre" in 1979, two years after it first was aired in Great Britain. I saw it then, bought the book by H.E. Bates, and later purchased the DVD set. This is a superb adaptation of a subtle literary work on British pastoral life, the many segments of the series giving adequate time to fully bring out the nuance of the book. It has encouraged me to visit England many times to savor the beauty of the countryside and small town charm. I think the author would have been very pleased to see how well his book had been adapted for television, and sadly he died just a few years before the project was completed.

Mel Martin and Christopher Blake give touching performances, and it is sad to see that Christopher Blake has died in 2004 while only in his mid-50's. You get to see Jeremy Irons do some fine work long before he earned his Oscar. Peter Davison is also excellent, before he became famous in "All Creatures Great and Small" and "Dr. Who." The distinguished older actors and actresses in this production remind us of the enormous pool of talent that can be found in Great Britain, where noted stage stars frequently appear in television dramas. I highly recommend this DVD set.

This is an adaptation of the novel by H. E. Bates, first published in 1952. The story is set in the small industrial town of Evensford, possibly based upon Bates's home town of Rushden, a town where the main industry is the manufacture of shoes and leather goods. The story takes place during the late 1920s and early 1930s and the main character is Edward Richardson, a young apprentice journalist on the local newspaper with ambitions to become a writer. (In the novel we never learn his Christian name; the name Edward was given to him for the purposes of the dramatisation).

The title character is Lydia Aspen, a girl from a once-wealthy but now impoverished aristocratic family who, after the death of her father, moves to Evensford to live with her elderly aunts and her eccentric uncle. Edward first meets her when he is sent to their house (a crumbling mansion isolated from the rest of the town behind a high stone wall) to get a story about her father's death. Lydia, a seemingly shy girl, has led a sheltered existence, and her meeting with Edward allows him to introduce her to the pleasures of ordinary life; for instance, he takes her skating on the frozen rivers, a popular local pastime during cold winters.

Lydia and Edward fall in love, but he realises that he is not her only admirer. She has at least three others- the wealthy Alex Sanderson, Tom Holland, a young farmer, and Bert "Blackie" Johnson, a car mechanic. Richardson realises that Lydia is not the shy, innocent girl for which he initially took her but can be wilful and fun-loving, and that she greatly enjoys the attentions of so many young men. His position is made more difficult by the fact that Alex and Tom are both close friends of his, and of each other. Blackie has more difficulty fitting in with the group because of his working-class background; Edward is also from a working-class family, but Tom and Alex seem more willing to accept him, possibly because of his literary aspirations and his more genteel accent.

I did not see this serial when it was first shown in 1977; I was a teenager at the time, had hardly heard of Bates, and the theme did not seem very interesting to me. I was introduced to Bates's work a few years later as a college student who I walked into a bookshop, saw a copy of the Penguin "Love for Lydia" and bought it on a whim, largely because the young woman on the cover looked very like my then girlfriend. I was immediately taken with the story, and over the years the novel has become one of my favourites. I therefore decided to watch the serial when it was recently repeated on the "Talking Pictures" TV channel.

I must admit that I did not enjoy it as much as the book. The main reason is that it is seriously overlong. Thirteen hour-long episodes is far too many for a reasonably short novel. (For the same reason I have never been a great fan of Granada's interminable adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited", even though I am well aware that some people will acclaim it as one of he greatest television serials ever made). Neither the rather bland Christopher Blake as Edward nor Mel Martin as Lydia make much impression. (Coincidentally, the girlfriend I referred to was also called Mel). At 28 and 30 they were also perhaps rather too old for their roles; Edward and Lydia are supposed to be in their late teens or early twenties, and their youth and inexperience are an important factor in the story.

There are better performances from a pre-stardom Jeremy Irons as Alex, from the future Doctor Who Peter Davison as Tom and from Sherrie Hewson as Tom's rather plain sister Nancy, who is besotted with Edward but despairs of ever being able to win him away from the bewitching Lydia. Among the supporting cast I also liked Michael Aldridge as Lydia's awful old Uncle Rollo and David Ryall as Edward's bullying, patronising editor Bretherton, who has a bigger role here than he played in the novel. Nevertheless, this serial will never eclipse the original book in my affections. 6/10.

LOVE FOR LYDIA is the sexy, sophisticated story of the dizzy and exciting but also rather empty lifestyle of English society people during the wild Twenties decade. The central character, Lydia, is a beautiful but rather shy girl at first. Then she inherits a great deal of money and begins to realize that she is a very desirable catch -- and that men will let her get away with almost anything!

The one man who truly loves Lydia is Richardson, a would-be writer from a rather poor and humble local family. On a cold winter day, Lydia has her first kiss from him, but instead of making her fall for him it merely sparks her interest in men in general. Before long Lydia is the talk of the town, dashing about in her flashy new clothes and going to hot, Twenties-style dances where she is always the center of attention. One by one, all the handsomest and most exciting young men in the neighborhood simply collapse at her feet -- rich and stylish Alec Sanderson, sweet and trusting Tom Holland, and even the tough local mechanic, mean and muscular and hairy-chested Blackie Flannagan. Lydia toys with all three men at once, totally enjoying both the sense of power and the pleasure. Totally ignoring the pain in Richardson's eyes, she grows more and more reckless, until at last tragedy strikes. Lydia sees herself as she truly is -- weak, greedy and selfish. She wants to change, but by now even loyal and faithful Richardson is tired of her. Is it too late for Lydia -- too late for love?

LOVE FOR LYDIA is a sumptuous and beautifully filmed romantic epic. The big dance scenes are exhilarating, but the quiet scenes draw you in too. Lydia changes from a shy schoolgirl to a glamorous and sexy siren.

But in her quiet moments you can see her basic insecurity, like the way she lies on the bed listening to the same jazz love song over and over. Night after night she dances till 2 or 3AM, and then next day is still asleep past noon.

There's an aimless quality to her life, and an emptiness as well. It shows in the way she downs a drink before dinner or takes a quick hit from a pocketbook flask. Glamorous and sexy, but you feel the human side of it -- the loneliness and the waste. A very good British series.