MEMORY LANE: REMEMBERING "A FAMILY AT WAR"

Memory Lane is a long and winding road. Some of the houses that stand alongside it require only a short walk; we can visit without breaking a sweat, have a faintly nostalgic look around, and be home before the sun goes down -- indeed, before lunch is on the table. With others, however, it's best to pack that lunch, along with a thermos, a lantern, and a sturdy pair of walking shoes, because they do not reside in this millennium. Indeed, they are to be found near the end of the Lane, in that frighteningly long-ago decade known as the 1970s. When we visit such places, we'd best be prepared to come home in the dark.

A FAMILY AT WAR is not likely to trigger the memory of Americans reading this. It was a British production produced by Granada Television, which ran from 1970 - 1972 on the BBC, and until recently it was incredibly difficult to find: even now, most streaming services idiotically only carry the first of its three series (seasons, in American lingo). If you are willing to make the effort, however -- and I did, obtaining bootleg Region 1 DVDs which had to be shipped to me from Australia -- it is well worth your time. FAMILY is a near-perfect representation of what British TV did regularly for decades before it succumbed in part to the bizarre ideologies of today: make damned good entertainment on a shoestring budget.

A FAMILY AT WAR chronicles the lives of the sprawling Ashton family, a lower middle-class clan from Liverpool, before, during, and immediately after World War 2, focusing on the hardships of "the home front" -- bombing, rationing, shortages, war profiteering, and the collapse of moral standards -- rather than combat, though a handful of memorable episodes do take us to places like North Africa, Spain, France, the North Sea and the flak-filled air over Germany. It was created by John Finch, who, IMDB tells us, "states he only wrote the original treatment as a ruse to be invited to the annual Granada conference where new drama ideas were discussed." Well, the ruse worked. Essentially a wartime soap opera, FAMILY boasted a huge ensemble cast, and was shot mostly -- but not entirely -- on soundstages, seldom venturing on location. Many of the best British productions of the 60s, 70s and 80s were remarkably low budget, with the delightful side-effect that the plots, dialogue and acting had to be first-rate to retain audience interest.

There are too many characters in FAMILY to list in detail, but in essence the story was held together by the Ashton patriarch, Edwin (Colin Douglas): a kindly, forebearing, hard-working man who married above his class when he wedded Jean (Shelagh Fraser), his seemingly doting wife. The two have five children, the oldest of which, David (Colin Campbell) is an absolute menace -- a selfish, philandering, drunken, self-pitying, rage-filled skirt chaser who bristles with class resentment and naturally volunteers for the Royal Air Force when the war breaks out, proving to be a much better soldier than he is a son, husband or human being. The others include Margaret (Lesley Nunnery), whose husband goes MIA in France while she is pregnant; and Philip (Keith Drinkel) a thoughtful veteran of the Spanish Civil War who finds the British Army somewhat more difficult to deal with.

A great deal of the conflict in the series, as well as much of its humor, is provided by Sefton Briggs (John McKelvey), Jean's cheap, scheming, greedy older brother, who cares not one damn about the war and lives to increase his wealth in underhanded ways. He's the sort of manipulative sneak who will steal your fingers while you're shaking hands. Sefton is continually opposed by his exasperated son Tony (T.R. Bowen), who always hovers on the brink of estrangement from his wicked old man, but can never quite make the break.

FAMILY is of course a soap opera, so there are tawdry affairs, abortive pregnancies, long-missing spouses thought to be dead who turn up at inconvenient moments, and a certain amount of drama for drama's sake. However, beneath the surface there is a great deal going on. The war is presented as it really was to working and lower middle class people in Britain: a calamity, and the attitudes of the Ashtons and their friends, lovers and in-laws reflects the full range. Edwin, a veteran of WW1, is both patriotic and deeply dubious of the necessity of war. Philip is so opposed to Fascism he fights for the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War, but returns confused and disillusioned, a feeling that persists when he joins the British army. Sefton regards the war as an opportunity to make money, while David sees the RAF as the means by which he will escape the drudgery of his working-class existence. Some of the female characters, like David's wife Sheila (Coral Atkins), suffer agonies trying to keep their families intact as social roles shift and already shaky marriages are tested by separation, scarcity, and in Jean's case, by the revelation of long-buried secrets. Other characters are conscientious objectors, pacifists, socialists, communists, fascist sympathizers and war profiteers, and each is given a full and reasonably fair hearing for their viewpoint. The whole "greatest generation" myth which is sold in America like a commodity is not so much exploded here as simply ignored. The Ashtons are not heroes. They are not villains. They are wholly ordinary people subjected to a catastrophe which was not of their making and which they try to navigate as best they can. Sometimes they cheat the ration system. Sometimes they question the need for the war. Sometimes they feel disgust at the bombing of German cities or pine or a negotiated settlement with Hitler which will end the carnage and return them to normal life. But of course there will be no return to normalcy for the Ashtons when the war ends. They have lost too much, suffered too much, grown and changed and experienced too much, to ever be the same again, and in that sense they are quite deliberately a metaphor for Britain itself.

I would be remiss if I didn't give special mention to Colin Douglas for his earthy, workmanlike, quietly charming performance as Edwin, the son of a dirtpoor coal-miner who married above his station and discovered, 30 years into the marriage, that his wife rather looks down on him, some of his kids are really screwed up, and his brother-in-law/boss Sefton has been grifting the bejeezus out of him since B.C. Throughout the calamity of the war, which visits every form of personal agony upon him, Douglas portrays Edwin as a good and kindly man, decent to the bone, not a saint by any means, but with an essential dencency and dignity which is deeply touching to witness. Douglas, a real-life WW2 vet who saw some the heaviest imaginable combat in Sicily and Holland, manages to hint at Edwin's deeper trauma without ever discussing it. It's a quietly masterful performance, complimented by the delightful, cartoonish villainy of McKelvey's Sefton, and the fiery mix of self-pity, class resentment and selfishness that Campbell's David brings to the table.

One of the great nerdly pleasures of watching FAMILY is picking out the faces of actors who later appeared on much more famous programs and movies. Fun fact: a staggering number of people who would perform important roles on other classic series, including:

Colin Douglas - Doctor Who
Shelagh Fraser - Star Wars
John Nettles - Midsomer Murders, Bergerac
Patrick Troughton - Doctor Who (the character himself! #2)
Wanda Ventham - Doctor Who, Invasion: UFO
Kenneth Colley - The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi
Mark Jones - The Empire Strikes Back, Doctor Who
William Marlowe - Doctor Who

I could go on, but you get the point. There's a ton of talent here, much of it seen at the beginning of its career. Afficianados of sci-fi in particular will delight in this.

So...where does that leave us? What is the legacy of A FAMILY AT WAR, a half-century after it drew its final curtain? Why are we here in this drafty old house in Liverpool, hiding under the dinner table while the German bombs fall around us?

I have no idea what influence FAMILY had (or did not) on British television. I can say that it had a great influence on me, because it presented a glorified and much-mythologized war in a realistic way, a sort of low-budget cinema verite that showed that for most people, the war was dreary, frightening, boring, frustrating, anxiety-inducing, and seemed to be ripping the fabric of society apart. That it was an opportunity for some and a tragedy for others but almost everyone wanted to it end, preferably at once. That the people who fought it came home and often discovered, and right quick, that they were already in the process of being screwed over and forgotten by the upper classes whose power they had fought to maintain.

It proved as well -- as if the thing needed proving, though it does need periodic reminder -- that dialogue-driven, character-heavy stories can be just as entertaining as those driven by action and sex. And that big budgets are completely unnecessary if you have the right idea, the right script, and the right actors. That human stories will always beat CGI. This is a lesson Hollywood would do well to take to heart, and for that reason alone, A FAMILY AT WAR is worth a watch.