[Afamilyatwar-list] John Finch's 'A Family at War' (Part 6)

[Veit, Richard]

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(What follows is the sixth and final part of John Finch’s recollections of ‘A Family at War,’ as excerpted from his forthcoming autobiography.)

John writes …

I found Margaret’s mother, Jean Ashton, very difficult to write for as played, but the directors tried very hard to make it work, and in many respects were successful. She was, after all, a very competent actress. Not everyone shared my feelings on this. Certainly the audience remained loyal almost throughout. A scene played by the actress did really get through to me though. It is evening among the ruins of an earlier bombing raid. Already her mind is under pressure from the loss of her youngest son (Robert). She wanders among the ruins and then, looking up, sees the broken remains of the bedroom she slept in as a girl: the shattered fireplace, the dangling wallpaper stirring in the evening breeze.
Details of many of the problems we faced in the early days of the series have been lost in the mists of time. I suspect that the major problem was the budget. There were trivialities, though if Granada Television’s founding chairman, Sydney Bernstein, had become aware of them, his reaction would have exceeded the trivial. For example, props department spent an inordinate sum of money buying in a selection of the currency of the time. Only a close-up shot of a coin, showing the date, and necessary to the story, could have justified the transaction. On the other hand, most directors did their level best to ensure that we got value for money.
An episode which was mostly centred around a bomber base would have made an economy startlingly obvious had there been no bombers. Stock film could not be used for obvious reasons, being in black and white, whereas this series was one of the first TV dramas to be shot in colour. But somehow, as the squadron took off for Germany, bomber after bomber roared down the runway, yet only four were available to us. This was due quite simply to the director’s skill in organising the shooting.
There may have been occasional complaints that many of the shots purporting to be in Liverpool were, in fact, located in Manchester. But if a street in one city is virtually identical to that in another, why spend valuable time and money transporting crews and equipment for the sake of pseudo authenticity?
I can’t remember any former member of the desert army complaining that scenes set in the Middle East were shot in the sand dunes at Formby on the East Coast. Sand is sand, from a viewer’s point of view. Nor can I remember any complaints from former members of the forces about the uniforms the actors wore. The research on badges, decorations, and stripes of rank, etc., were all efficiently serviced. What I did notice—and this did not apply to Granada—was the frequency with which uniforms, and clothes generally in plays and series about the World Wars, appeared to have come straight from the dry cleaners.
In the early part of the story, soon after the fictional wedding, Margaret, played by our pregnant actress, has to part with John, who is sent to France with the British Expeditionary Force. When France is overrun by the Germans, he is wounded and taken prisoner. Margaret receives a telegram saying that he is missing believed killed. She fears the worst, but the uncertainty is hard to bear, and in her heart she becomes convinced that she will not see him again. But she desperately wants the certainty of knowing the truth of the situation.
At the school where she teaches, she meets Michael, a widower whose daughter is a pupil at the school. He is very attracted to her, and although he becomes aware of the situation, he pursues her through the involvement with his daughter. Though Margaret tries to avoid becoming attracted, eventually she gives way, and their relationship deepens—to the point that she eventually becomes pregnant with his child.
John’s mother, Celia Porter, very neurotic and possessive where John is concerned, becomes aware of the situation, and this is further complicated by the inevitable progress of the pregnancy. Later, however, Margaret is injured in an air raid and loses the baby. Not long after, we learn that John is still alive and is a prisoner of war. His eventual return is clouded over by the fact that he is a changed person and needs help to become re-settled, and knowledge of what has happened in his absence would obviously damage him. Margaret breaks her ties with Michael in order to help John, but hanging over the whole panorama is Celia’s knowledge of what has happened in his absence, whether she will reveal this, and what the outcome will be.
At this distance in time, it is difficult to remember the story it took the place of—that is, before learning of actress Lesley Nunnerley’s pregnancy—but I cannot imagine anything which would have given us a better outcome over the succession of episodes. The gods were certainly smiling on us, as we were compelled to create a fiction out of a reality.
‘A Family at War’ has been described as the first television novel. What I attempted to do, set alongside the historical timeline established by the events of the real war, was to give each episode a self-contained story, loosely attached to the ongoing serial of the family and the war, so that viewers who were not able to see the whole could gain some viewer satisfaction from the one episode, and also pick up the thread later on, something not normally applicable to the novel as a genre. It was the case that quite often a word taken from the theme of a story could be found in the title of the episode.
Looking back, I cannot remember any serial/series I created which did not involve, at some point, a major catastrophe. A unique experience, for me, was the international reception of something I had worked on. ‘A Family at War’ was the first, and also the most astonishing, example of this. It is now half a century since it was first transmitted, but almost daily I still get letters from viewers in various parts of the world, viewers who have recently purchased the DVD set. I can truthfully say that, without exception, they have all to some degree or other been positive—some embarrassingly so, since I am aware of imperfections which seem to have passed them by, or for which they have forgiven me.
It doesn’t even seem to trouble them that, due to a technicians’ strike, eight of the hour-long installments (Episode Twenty-five through Episode Thirty-two) were made in black and white. On the contrary, some viewers say the whole series should have been shot in black and white, as it added authenticity to the period.

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