Though neither attracting the huge audiences of Bread nor defining an era like The Liver Birds, Butterflies is arguably the most successful of Carla Lane's sitcoms in terms of its style, oblique yet revolutionary theme and the affection in which it remains held. The story depicts Ria Parkinson, an attractive middle-class woman approaching middle-age and worrying that she has not made the most of her life. Her husband Ben, a dentist and collector of butterflies, is a stable yet essentially dull man; their children Russell and Adam are typical teenagers, with a typical teenage rivalry.

On the surface, Ria seemed an extension of other Wendy Craig TV characters (Not In Front Of The Children ... And Mother Makes Three/Five) but whereas they wondered aloud at their lot, Ria became obsessed with it in her every waking moment, her thoughts being dominated by the notion that time was slipping through her fingers. The series' bitter-sweet nature and sometimes downbeat atmosphere set it apart from other sitcoms, and dramatic undertones allowed it to deal with subjects (like teenage pregnancy and suicidal feelings) that many others series would have avoided. The central theme in Butterflies, indeed, was the temptation of adultery, with Ria being wooed by a wealthy businessman, Leonard, who represented the sort of adventure missing from her life. But Ria's upbringing and natural timidity made it impossible for her to consummate the relationship, so instead she daydreamed about it and, in this way, actually seemed to achieve some solace.

The series was very well cast. Wendy Craig brought believability and vulnerability to the part of Ria, Geoffrey Palmer proved that 'less is more' with his fine, understated performance as Ben, and Andrew Hall and Nicholas Lyndhurst were excellent as Russell and Adam. Bruce Montague as Leonard, Michael Ripper as his enigmatic chauffeur and Joyce Windsor as the Parkinsons' cleaning lady Ruby, all supported well. But they couldn't have made it work without Carla Lane's finely judged script, which had just enough traditional sitcom elements (the family's reaction to Ria's gruesome attempts at cookery, the adolescent bickering of the boys) to keep the mood light before exploring the darker areas of her frustration, her marital boredom and ageing.

In 1979 the format of Butterflies was sold to the USA and Carla Lane flew to Los Angeles to work on the script (also to be titled Butterflies) with the producer Milt Josefsberg. A pilot episode was screened by NBC on 1 August 1979 with Jennifer Warren as Rea (sic) Parkinson, John McMartin as Ben, Craig Wasson as Russell, Robert Doran as Adam and Jim Hutton as Leonard. Lane was hugely disappointed with the US version, lamenting the loss of most of the idea's subtlety, and it failed to graduate to a full series.

The title Butterflies seems to suggest many things, among them the idea that Ria and her family were pinned down (like the butterflies in Ben's collection) for us to study each week. Publicity for the US version suggested that the title came from the saying 'We are like kids chasing butterflies - we see it, we want it'. But introducing the series in an article in Radio Times, Carla Lane remarked that the title could refer to lost opportunities and the sudden realisation that time is running out, leaving people fluttering around, 'like butterflies with so much to do and so little time to do it'.

Note. Wendy Craig reprised her Butterflies role in The Last Waltz, a specially scripted production featuring characters from four Carla Lane series (Bread, Solo and The Liver Birds were the others) aired by BBC1 on 10 March 1989 as part of Comic Relief.

Mark Lewisohn

The cast of Butterflies, Wendy Craig, Geoffrey Palmer, Andrew Hall, Nicholas Lyndhurst, Bruce Montague and Joyce Windsor all appeared in a short special, screened on BBC1 on November 17, 2000 as part of Children in Need. The family, now seventeen years on, still retained its former appeal, with Carla Lane proving, yet again, that she is a master of this genre.