STEVE HATCHER considers the TV life of HADLEIGH.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on June 9th 2024.

A few weeks ago on VISION ON SOUND, STEVE HATCHER took us on a brief tour through the television lives of several characters who were the kind of testosterone-fuelled monsters that used to inhabit the boardrooms and bedrooms of those high-profile dramas of the sixties and seventies whose dodgy dealings and shady shenanigans somehow came to define the notion of what the world of big business resembled for generations of viewers.

It was in VISION ON SOUND 186, if you are the kind of listener who might want to look that sort of thing up.

One character who was initially on that list ultimately didn’t manage to make the cut as he turned out - unexpectedly - to be rather too nice to be included on such a list, and that was JAMES HADLEIGH, as played by former ADAM ADAMANT GERALD HARPER, across four incredibly popular series of a show which was created by ROBERT BARR and ultimately consisted of 52 hour-long episodes (unsurprisingly titled HADLEIGH), which was produced by Yorkshire Television that ran across the ITV network between 1969 and 1976.

HADLEIGH told of the various ups and downs in the life of the local squire – something I’m sure we can all relate to - as he protects the welfare of his tenants in the role of a kind of knight in shining armour, correcting social injustices from behind the wheel of his Aston Martin as one description would have it, although it’s probably more about HADLEIGH’s financial trials and tribulations, and the ups and downs of a complicated personal life, all of which seemed to become compulsive viewing for anything up to 17 million viewers during the years that it was being broadcast.

Also, as STEVE will explain, the HADLEIGH series was itself a sequel to a very different hour-long drama series that was also created by ROBERT BARR and produced by YTV in 1968, GAZETTE, which was an altogether much harder-hitting and more working class drama based around the activities of a local newspaper based in the north.

Anyway, as STEVE’s now finished watching all of HADLEIGH’s televised adventures, he thought it might be fun to come back onto the show and discuss what he made of a series that he actually found quite compelling viewing despite it sounding like it really would not exactly be his cup of Earl Grey in a bone china teacup at all.

PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.