I was 16 when this was broadcast. People are so insulting about the 1970's -I suppose because of the industrial upheaval - endless strikes etc. But, the culture was so much finer than today. (Apart from the architectural vandalism which was horrific). Popular music and television were superb - unmatched by anything today. Just for an hour or so I can go back and immerse myself in genuine excellence, something we took so much for granted then. Thank you.

Those were the days when the duration of a television play is not shoe horned into the straight jacket of a schedule slot. Once again this brilliant cast carry it off.

Great to watch Peter Barkworth after all these years. Thank you!

Very well put together performance, wonderful to see so many long forgotten faces and the superb Peter Barkworth. Thank you so much.

How could I have forgotten Peter Barkworth? He was on the telly all the time when I was young. Fabulous actor with a beautiful plummy voice. It’s a shame the quality of this recording is poor, but it’s still very enjoyable for all that.

Great thank you, anything Peter Barkworth is in is worth watching superb actor. ❤️

Always like Peter Barkworth so cool and charming, great times the 70’s

Stuart Fanning: Thank you so much for this, Peter Barkworth was a family friend, so I remember both him, and also Joshua Le Touzel (David) who was at my Stage School, with much affection, great being able to see this again, after all those years, and brings back such fond memories of two fine fellow Actors, I had the pleasure of knowing.

Superb acting, I remember watching it when it was first shown.Thank you.

Many thanks KZfaq for helping to highlight and preserve the quality of British television,and given us the opportunity to view episodes that I for one have never seen before 👌🏾

This was good - it’s held up very well.

a delight to watch, times when everything was so much more tasteful than today.

Marvelous. Fascinating insight into a lost world

Brilliant play... also see Saturday Party with the same cast, both are excellent!

Well written and well acted. Very enjoyable! An interesting time capsule but with some universal truths.

Ahhh. The slower paced and quiet pause of 1970s TV storytelling and broadcasting. It sure beats the ear assaulting rushed abrasive ness and degenerate dark story content of today.

Peter Barkworth could accomplish more standing still for several seconds than most other actors could do in two hours. Amazingly subtle and beautiful.

Brilliant acting. Thank you for posting 😊

This reminded me of just how repulsive smoking in restaurants was. Great play, love Peter Barkworth.

Superb drama.

These are a fascinating time capsule. I was only 8 years old at this moment but I feel a very strange nostalgia for this culture of my parents.

I’ve watched Saturday Party and the whole series of Telford’s Change, absolutely scintillating. Peter Barkworth was an amazing actor and many others of his time. They seem to capture the Englishness of what was becoming an ever changing world in their time.

This series was originally screened on British tv back in the late 1970's, but i was too young to be able to take interest in it at the time, but now i have luckily found this Gem on KZfaq, i am really enjoying watching it. I noticed the two very young Birds of a feather working in the kitchen! (Pauline Quirke and Linda Robson) who both went on to greater things! ...... Incidentally, Peter's character gave us a glimpse into the future, when he was conversing with the unconventional couple as he said to them, "until we have telephones with televisions attached to them, we cannot see who we are booking in!" Many thanks for resurrecting this wonderful blast from the past for me! xxxxx

thanks for this first class noursihment

Thoroughly enjoyed this. Love the “stuffy middle class” theme, at least you can understand them.

Mick McGathy Jack Jones-that takes me back! Names on everyone's lips in 1977. Utterly forgotten now. How many people under 40 years old knows or cares who they were? Vanity, vanity all is vanity.That bit of trivia from me aside, an excellent play, well acted, very sad and very true to life.

The pregnant girlfriend meeting wife, I was not expecting that. Then I see the actor who played the vicar is called Colin Farrell. Very enjoyable.☘️

Amazing. Thanks for posting.

It's nice to see the guests know how to use a knife and fork.

Thank you for uploading. 👌💕

Good story. Life is something that unfolds while we're making other plans.... not sure who said that, but it's very often true.

I wish people would stop complaining always about having perfect quality with watching because you can’t have ever watched old video tapes if you expect the quality to always be as good as modern video and KZfaq quality and it is from 1977 after all what do you expect And about the number code at the top it doesn’t bother me really at all and it’s interesting to see aswell and it’s just because of it being a bbc copy too.

The opening scene looks like the vicarage in Miss Marple’s the Murder at the vicarage

Ha! Linda Robson and Pauline Quirk in the Kitchen! I’ll keep an eye out for Dorian

Love the ending! :)

Brilliant!

thanks for posting. been searching for a while. mark shivas production.

Definitely needs new staff! Thank you for the two, very enjoyable uploads.

I loved it !

Superb. Thank you. ☺ The skill of the actors doing things and talking at the same time is impressive. Each person played their part!

Nice twist at the end..

Great drama!

This was aired the year I was born. A curious look into life across the pond at that time.

love it

Peter Barkworth is so middle class in this role and Telford's Change (where he did not change at all) it almost hurts to see.

Touch of the Fawlty Towers about all this.

The Vicker has a passing resemblance to David Walliams..

For anyone who thinks this about "nothing": So much in here that reveals little chippings away at the fabric of society. at 39:00 the wife agrees to split up a property that was an integrated traditional farm so she can get more $$. The publisher laughs at a joke made by his author uneasily and a little too much, knowing that he himself doesn't really understand the joke and hoping the author doesn't cut into his profits. The "loyal" employees are cheats. The ex-wife is a piece of work, unsupportive, completely oblivious to why Richard gave up his money grubbing profession in the city. And when her daughter tries so hard to bring her parents back together she even asks "why is it so important to you?" Say what??? The young gate crashers don't even appreciate how he goes to extra trouble to accommodate them. Bottom line--the dissatisfaction and mean spiritedness of spoiled people who don't give a thing to anyone and think the world owes them everything they want. Sad all around, and our protagonist is just trying to have a decent life that doesn't rob or insult anyone. Then comes a subtle change and we see a touch of the warm humane in various people. A very human story well told.

Peter Barkworth was a great actor (Telford's Change) but a great pity about the needless intrusive timer

The pubs were great though!!

And again thank you KZfaq!

I feel like I am there with them. "If Only"

I wish I could watch this movie but I can’t because of the flashing numbers on it. Thank you for uploading I’ll try to find it another way ❤

Didn't his menu sound FABULOUS! Proper going-out-to-dinner-best-frock food not the sort of twiddled morseld we get nowadays.

It seems that Ted is now getting success with his tomatoes and, as a result, has moved away from the dreaded tomatoe chutney to more of life's delicate perks. He's definitely made progress.

Great, but why that timer???

Mrs Warboys, one foot in the grave,,

He lives in Folkestone

👍🏻

as a film maker myself, my only regret about past film is that 16mm never lasts as well as 35mm, but of course, TV Budgets could not stretch to full-frame stock sadly. I hope one day, perhaps using new technology, in the future, every 70s film shot on 16mm can be not just restored but brought up to modern standards and colourized, as it was shot: I'm sure this could be done one day, although the costs of course, would be questionable. The videotape studio scenes from the 70s, still look ok, thanks to the quality of the equipment used, even back in those days!

A relief to see no performative hugging, high-fives and perpetual neuroses and emotional incontinence.

😮So this was middle class... interesting!

The scene at 43:40 the scene when outside couple come in, does anyone get the feeling a lot of the other people dining at the restaurant are staring them down judgemental stares as if they’ve never seen anyone in different clothing from theirs. The woman in the background at 44:05 definitely shows that I think in the blue dress staring daggers at them , it’s like saying to her “Oi you keep your nose out of other people’s business and affairs and get on with your own.” It’s also like “what the heck are you staring at eh?”

I wonder how some of the wives at the restaurant got lumbered with some of those husbands in the first place. 🙂

Good Lord! Mrs. Warbouys! AND Pauleen Quirk & Linda Robson! Were they conjoined twins lol.

This grass is growing too s l o w l y.

‘You’re a reed’ ...!

Is that Arthur Daley?

Wow another classic play, best stick something annoying and distracting on the screen!

Everyone has a public school accent and uses upper class language (apart from the servants ofcourse!)

19:32

There was more class in those days in comparison to nowadays. People today have lost their breeding.

Oh ! A St Georges flag in opening scene . Wouldn't be allowed by BBC today . Not " diverse " enough and might offend new Britons..

And Susan never said she wanted someone to keep her in horses and clothing everything else as you said you old hazbeen.

Shades of Fawlty what!

What a collection of cnuts. They're so desperate for fools gold and meanwhile trach the only thing they have of real value. Very good production. Thank you.

All of these plays from this period featured endless drinking of alcohol.

🤢 that's sick server girl with the nose blowing... this is why I say a protection prayer with every meal if I eat out🙏

Gosh the daughter Emma in the story seems very much kind of jumping the gun especially the fact that she arranged this dinner at her father’s restaurant in the country without much permission from the rest of the family and without her mother knowing and she’s got a sarcastic kind of classy cheekiness about her and just very kind of an adult thinking that she’s the arranger for all of this and kind of vivacious in a manipulative sort of way tricking with her mother, and as well did the thought not strike any of the family members especially the children that their father may have divorced and that he had remarried in a way it is Richard’s fault I think partly with him to blame just that he must have been desperate to be in a relationship with another woman but then again it should be a free country for him shouldn’t it as he had divorced anyway previously from his wife Jane but then it’s understandable on one hand why seeing his new wife there would be a shock and the family would be disappointed and as well I would have thought that Richard would have informed Jane or Emma that his current wife would perhaps visit later on and join them and it doesn’t seem much of a family occasion by the end of the play with Richard’s new wife dropping by like that and nothings mentioned about Richard’s new wife really for most of the play before as if they really didn’t know that much before even though they left each other I would have thought they could have stayed in contact with each other with telephoning each other perhaps.

Supurb

For the price of a duck.

What a miserable man! Had everything, had nothing.

Have these women no respect for male privacy, and shameless springing of "surprises" as part of their instinctive manipulations?

A middle class 1970s borefest Hoorah!!!!!

What a stupid story...all about nothing..

Fascinating to go inside the lives of the middle classes. Richard was a tremendous and selfless host.

"It's pronounced 'Bucket''"