[Afamilyatwar-list] Episode 5

[Veit, Richard]

Episode No. 5, “The Gate of the Year”

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“The Gate of the Year” is perhaps most notable for giving us, for the first time in depth, the intriguing couple of Harry and Celia Porter. So masterfully conceived are these two characters that they seem utterly real and true to life. Celia is insecure and self-centered, Harry is a bit stodgy but compassionate and eminently likeable. Indeed, one might wonder how these disparate personalities ever came to be married. Later episodes suggest (through Harry’s musings) that Celia changed much in the intervening years, nearly suffocating with love the couple’s son, John, whom she dotes upon and spoils.

Celia Porter is an annoying and unsympathetic character, to be sure, but Margery Mason’s portrayal is so brilliantly convincing that I find myself actually pitying the poor woman and wishing she could find the happiness that, alas, will forever elude her. No less human is the long-suffering character of Harry Porter, trapped in a claustrophobic state of matrimony that only a saintly gentleman could endure. The explanation, of course, is that Harry (played by Patrick Troughton) truly does love his wife, despite her conspicuous flaws and incessant, confrontational nagging. John, as we shall see, does not escape this unhealthy familial environment without some profound emotional scars. Margaret’s simmering resentment of her mother-in-law is most apparent when her desire to have a meal with her husband, on leave from Formby, is foiled by Celia’s selfish determination to prepare a cauliflower cheese for him instead. I think these two wonderful actresses (Margery Mason and Lesley Nunnerley) play off each other superbly well throughout the entire run of the series.

A pivotal moment in “The Gate of the Year” comes when John witnesses the shocking sight of his father kissing Connie Edwards under the mistletoe. I like the way director Michael Cox chose to block this scene, with the camera positioning John Porter between the kissing pair.

Two briefer performances also should be recognised. Arthur Cox does a nice job of playing the unctuous but harmless Reg Thorpe, who dallies with Mrs. Cole at the ARP. John Comer is wonderful as the taxi driver, a veteran of the First World War who talks to John about the importance of using gas masks, saying, "We're all in the trenches now."

Quite effective, I think, is the entire sequence of John’s frustrating inability to locate Margaret before leaving on his emergency posting—excellent writing by John Finch, creating a believable sequence of circumstantial events that might well occur in the real world.
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