Flambards (TV series)

The story revolves around Christina Parsons, coming of age in a tumultuous era, of old and new, of horses and aeroplanes, of foxhunts, class, suffragettes, death, war, love, loss, and rebuilding new lives out of the ashes of old ones. The story begins with Christina, an orphan who has been shunted from one relative to the next since the age of 5, coming to live with her cousins and uncle at an estate in Essex called Flambards in 1909 at the age of 16. Her crippled uncle (her mother's half-brother) William Russell is almost never referred to by his first name; she calls him Uncle Russell, perhaps to avoid confusion with her cousin, also named William Russell. Her cousin William speculates that Russell plans for Christina to marry his son Mark in order to restore Flambards to its former glory using the money that she will inherit on her twenty-first birthday. Mark is as brutish as his father, with a great love for hunting, whereas the younger son William is terrified of horses after a hunting accident and aspires to be an early-era aviator. Christina soon finds friendship with the injured William, who challenges her ideas on class boundaries, as well as her love for horses and hunting. William and Christina eventually fall in love and run away to London from the hunt ball.

• Christine McKenna as Christina Parsons
• Steven Grives as Mark Russell
• Alan Parnaby as William Russell
• Edward Judd as Uncle Russell
• Frank Mills as Fowler
• Carol Leader as Dorothy
• Rosalie Williams as Mary
• Anton Diffring as Mr. Dermot

The series's memorable score was composed by David Fanshawe, who is most famous for his 1972 composition African Sanctus. Of his score for Flambards Fanshawe later wrote,

"On April 5th, 1977, I was on my way to give a talk about my travels in Africa to the Oxfam Annual Staff Conference in Abingdon when, quite by accident, I whistled something, whistled it again, drew five lines and wrote it down. On arrival, I sought out the nearest piano, played the chord of 'A' seventh and whistled again. Just before going on stage, I completed the first phrase by writing it out backwards and indeed whistled it backwards: and that was the beginning of the music for Flambards.

A week earlier, producer Leonard Lewis had phoned me, asking if I would like to compose a score for a 13-part series he was producing for Yorkshire Television. He sent me the books of Flambards by K.M. Peyton, together with the first part adapted for television by Alan Plater. On meeting the star of Flambards, Christine McKenna, who plays Christina in the series, I was convinced that the whistle was right for the signature tune. Keith Morgan, then Head of Music at Yorkshire Television, got the message and even whistled it back. So, that was how I came to compose five hours of music based on a 3½ bar whistle!"[12]

For the aerial scenes radio controlled model period aircraft were used, the shots framed so that the small size of the aircraft was concealed.

• Flambards at IMDb