Howard's Way - The Complete Collection [DVD]

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No-one is madder than Polly. A bored trophy wife, she's rather sympathetic from time to time. She fails to understand why Jan is upset when Polly sets up another company using Jan's name, and then starts trying to expand to America. The writers must have had a brainstorm that day. Actually, there may be someone madder than Polly. Sarah Foster is utterly barking. Find out who's behind that Guernsey holding company. I'm worried we're vulnerable to a takeover bid". "Who's fronting that nominee company?". "You're a paper millionaire now you've gone public". "We must have a majority holding in the Placenta Corporation". "I'll put it to the board of Diagonal Holdings". Utterly meaningless and baffling. Every character tries to take over everyone else's company, and the business dealings are totally opaque and difficult to follow. I have no idea who owned which company at any given time, and all the obvious drama inherent in the boardroom discussions might have been in another language. Maybe this is how life really was in the 80s. Inspired by a storyline in Howards' Way, Gerard Glaister went on to create Trainer (1991–1992), set in the world of horse-racing, and also featuring several of the same cast members. As well as many on-screen romances, Jan Harvey and Stephen Yardley became more than just good friends, as did Tracey Childs and Tony Anholt who played super-smooth tycoon Charles Frere.

I have had many a great holiday on the Isle Of Wight and of course this means going over by ferry, i love this bit. Other major characters introduced during the first series are Kate Harvey ( Dulcie Gray), Jan's sensible and supportive mother, the millionaire businessman Charles Frere ( Tony Anholt) and the wealthy but unhappy Urquhart family. Gerald ( Ivor Danvers) is the right-hand man of Charles Frere. Polly ( Patricia Shakesby), a friend of Jan, is a bored corporate wife preoccupied with preserving her social status, and their daughter Abby ( Cindy Shelley) is a socially awkward young woman who has returned to Tarrant after completing her education at a Swiss finishing school and who establishes a friendship with Leo Howard. Unlike the comparatively close and secure Howard family, the Urquharts have secrets to hide. Gerald and Polly's marriage is a sham—an arrangement to cover the fact that Gerald is bisexual, to give him respectability in the business world and give a name to Abby, Polly's illegitimate daughter after an affair at university. Abby herself is pregnant, after a brief relationship in Switzerland. I was obviously not alone in my assertion of the appalling manner of the acting as I cannot remember any of the cast being in anything after Howard's Way. Top of the "they should never work again" list was the oily fashion victim Ken Masters (Stephen Yardley) closely followed by Kate "Dahhhhling" Howard (Dulcie Gray) and the over-the-top-meistress, Kate O'Mara. Sunday night ..winter , this was brilliant viewing...classic 1980s drama ...a story of redundancy...starting over again...social position , changing times ...almost Jane Austin The plot is basically about Southern 80's yuppies and their luxury boats and racing triumphs in the fictional South Coast port town 'Tarrant'. Beneath the 'glamorous' surface it portrays their stressful lives, filled with affairs, family breakdowns, redundancy, bankrupcy, deceit, feud and the odd death. This show has a gritty realism to it, portraying the upper-middle-class as yet another struggling and potentially unhappy social sector, a sector that self-induces such stress and sadness through the ritual pursuit of the rat-race !

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With everyone commissioning everyone else to build them a world-class boat, before going out for a luncheon appointment with The Bank, Howards Way repeats the same series of story lines over and over again. Every year, every character has business dealings in some exotic clime or other, and half the cast decamp for a sunnier location. The Bermuda stuff in the last series is very strange. Malta, Gibraltar, France and Guernsey poke their heads up from time to time. I've actually got the full 6 series box set on DVD somewhere but have still managed to be caught up by the reruns on Drama and the catchups on the UKTV play app ! Stupid I know I'm wondering how well it will have aged - it was very much of its time, especially the fashion. I seem to recall it being promoted as the British answer to Dallas or Dynasty If you have not seen it yet, please do, it's great, i believe there are Howards Way boat trips to go on up the Hamble in the area as well, they should be good.

I am at present collecting the complete series of Howards Way, as i just love the drama of it all so much, i have just bought series three.It's the characters with integrity that stand out. The only working class person allowed dialogue is Bill From The Mermaid Yard, who steals every scene he is in just by not having to talk about share prices. Gerald Urquhart's old school tie hoves into view every now and then; he is utterly competent, likable and honest. The fact that he is gay is conveniently forgotten after some quite strong and dramatic scenes in which AIDS is skirted around and then finally mentioned, and he cops off with Kate O'Mara. When I watched this series in the 1980's, I could never make out if Howard's Way was meant to be a comedy, a soap or trying to be a serious drama. After watching the whole series recently on UK drama, I've definitely come to the conclusion that it's a comedy. Ken masters clothes set the tone with some extraordinary combinations and the way he wore them, sleeves rolled up! All he needed to complete the look was a red nose and he'd be the perfect clown. The designs of Jan Howard's fashion house were pretty awful too, but she still manages to expand at an incredible rate, opening shops, factories and boutiques everywhere, ending up taking her company public. Some of the cast would fit perfectly into a sailing club sit-com. Totally implausible plots, big shoulder pads, badly acted, intrusive syrupy incidental music and characters with no redeeming features whatsoever (aside possibly from Avril Rolfe, played by Susan Gilmore). It made for unmissable TV. I don't think it was meant to be a comedy, but it certainly made me laugh. Although derided by critics [ who?] as a cheesy melodrama, Howards' Way nevertheless proved to be a hugely popular programme for the BBC, both domestically and in overseas sales. While the series was unable to compete with the likes of Dallas and Dynasty in terms of opulence, its stylistic aspects did develop as it went on, with the staging of powerboat races and fashion shows, and extensive location filming in Guernsey, Malta and Gibraltar as the storylines dictated.

The story of Leo and Abby begins as perhaps the most heart-warming thread in the series. How could the scriptwriters let us down so badly? Also, keep an eye open for wooden Kate Harvey. At the very end of the series, she's seen shuffling some papers and explains she is planning her campaign to be elected to the local council. An episode later, someone asks if she'll be late for her committee meeting. Utterly preposterous.The series combined standard melodramatic storylines involving family drama, romance and extramarital affairs (Tom and Avril, Jan and Ken) with business-related plots of corporate intrigue and scheming for power, climaxing with an end-of-series cliffhanger. I remember the acting being somewhat variable, especially from the children, Leo and Lynne, although Jan Harvey (Jan Howard) , Susan Gilmore (Avril Rolfe) and Tony Anholt (Charles Frere) as the baddy were most entertaining. Even so, it was excruciatingly hammy in places The ridiculous notion that Southampton was a financial hub and the focus of the fashion world beggared belief. I cannot believe that anyone of the viewing millions actually understood anything Charles Frere, Gerald Urquhart and Edward Frere were talking about when it came to "big" business. And how did Jan Howard go from bored housewife to top fashion house proprietor in about three weeks ?!