Shillingbury Tales

Shillingbury Tales was a British television sitcom comedy-drama series made by ATV for ITV and broadcast 1980-81.

Comprising a single feature-length pilot and six one-hour episodes, the series deals with life in an idealised fictional English village and stars Robin Nedwell, Diane Keen, Nigel Lambert, Jack Douglas, John Le Mesurier, Bernard Cribbins and Trevor Howard.

It was preceded by a feature length pilot episode The Shillingbury Blowers starring Trevor Howard, broadcast 6 January 1980

The series was written by Francis Essex and directed by Val Guest. Unusually for a British situation-comedy at that time it was recorded entirely on location on 16mm film and consequently there was no laughter track. Much of the filming took place in the village of Aldbury in Hertfordshire.

The show ended when ATV lost their franchise licence to broadcast and their replacement Central declined to continue production of the series. The series was broadcast in a number of countries around Europe.

Episodes

Pilot

• The Shillingbury Blowers (6 Jan 80)

Series 1

• The Shillingbury Tinker (17 May 81)
• The Shillingbury Melon (24 May 81)
• The Shillingbury Cloudburst (31 May 81)
• The Shillingbury Legend (7 Jun 81)
• The Shillingbury Miracle (14 Jun 81)
• The Shillingbury Daydream (21 Jun 81)

Cuffy

In 1983, A spin-off sequel series entitled Cuffy was made and broadcast by ATV's successor Central. The show this time focused on and around Bernard Cribbins's character Cuffy.

However the spin-off series didn't feature Robin Nedwell or Diane Keen as they had left to focus on other work at the time.

DVD release

The show was released on DVD by Network in 2005.

External links

• Shillingbury Tales at the Internet Movie Database