Carla Lane

THE THREE PIECE SUITE

UK BBC SKETCH 6 x 30 mins colour
8 Mar-12 Apr 1977 BBC2

MAIN CAST
Diana Rigg

CREDITS
See below for explanations

Writers
Richard Waring (1a)
Roy Clarke (1b)
Keith Waterhouse/Willis Hall (1c & 3c)
Terence Brady/Charlotte Bingham (2a & 5c)
Michael Sadler (2b, 4a & 6a)
Dick Clement/ lan La Frenais (2c)
Hugh Leonard (3a)
Alexander Woolcot (3b)
Neil Shand (4b)
John Esmonde/Bob Larbey (4c)
Carla Lane (5a)
Tina Brown (5b)
Jilly Cooper (6b)
Alan Coren (6c)

Producer
Michael Mills

Following her unsuccessful US sitcom Diana, Ms Rigg made a much better stab at TV comedy with this well-crafted series.

Each edition featured three separate, extended sketches, and top-notch writers were commissioned to provide material written especially for the series. (In the credits above, the number/letter in parentheses refers to the edition number - and position within that edition - of the writer's work; i.e., the third sketch in the fourth programme is denoted as 4c.) Each vignette featured a star supporting cast more associated with straight acting than comedy, although Tony Britton, Patsy Rowlands and (in the final programme) John Cleese, were among the contributors.

The sketches tended to be bittersweet rather than broad, and usually carried a serious underlying theme. This has long proven a tricky area for TV comedy and, although such series tend to attract a cult following, they rarely prove attractive to a wider audience, as Eleanor Bron and, later, Emma Thompson, discovered.

Mark Lewisohn

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