Howard's Way - The Complete Collection [DVD]

Product Information

The original working title for the series was "The Boatbuilders", which was ultimately rejected when it was felt that it sounded like a documentary series and wouldn't grab viewers' attention. The show is rated PG for Parental Guidance in Australia and PG in New Zealand for violence and coarse language.

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 ?! Utterly ludicrous in every way, Howards Way feels like it has been beamed in from another planet, not from twenty years in the past. It's always held up as the ultimate example of British aspiration in the 80s: powerdressing, shoulderpads, big hair, big cars, mobile phones, powerboats, money money money. The world seen in Howards Way is completely unlike anything of my experience that it seems alien.

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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. Southampton Town Hall became a Swiss bank, Rhode Island was recreated at Warsash on the River Hamble, and Claude and Lynne’s romance on the QE2 was filmed partly on the Isle of Wight ferry and partly on a decidedly unglamorous dredger in the Solent.

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? It might be an idea trying to watch on catch ups where adverts are cut out but on Sky catch up where they do cut adverts on Drama's catchup programmes, the amount of episodes could be limited in the amount available. 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. 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.

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. 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 All interiors were filmed in Studio A at the now-demolished BBC Pebble Mill studios in Edgbaston, Birmingham. Extensive two-storey sets were constructed inside the studio (the Howards and the Urquhart homes were both functioning two-floor sets). The smaller Studio B (used for regional news) was also occasionally used as an on-screen fashion photography studio. Other areas of the large 1970s TV and radio complex (opened in 1971) were used for the many board room scenes in the series, with long corridors and lifts sometimes doubling as a busy hospital and meeting rooms became lavish corporate hospitality suites. I've never seen Howards Way, have tried to get round to it a few times but like Bergerac and Lovejoy, never got round to it. 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.

The Howard’s were blessed with two offspring: languid, goldfish-like Leo (Edward Highmore) and the huge-hulled Lynne (Tracey Childs), a spoilt brat who, after sailing solo across the Atlantic, married pigtailed Frenchman Claude du Pont (Malcolm Jamieson). 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.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 !

As a bloke, there was obvious universal appeal, regardless of what you thought of the actual programme; SARAH-JANE VARLEY (who plays boating tycoon Ken's girlfriend). Little, extremely cute, tender and culturally refined, what with her little round toned face, little thin flat lips and beady eyes; Cute beyond possibility ! An English Rose if ever there was one ! Tracey Childs (Howards' daughter Lynne) was a cute curvy stunner and all. What with this show having a coastal setting, it was nice seeing all these cute stunning girls in bikinis. 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. Look out for some wonderful guest stars and guest characters: Catherine Schell, Pamela Salem, Michael Cochrane, a young Anthony Head, boo-hiss Francesca Gonshaw, a gozzy-eyed animal rights baddie, Stephen Grief as his standard-issue "oily foreigner" character. So much of Howards Way is familiar, it fits like a glove. The other member of the clan was Tom’s mother-in-law, Kate (Dulcie Gray), a compulsive gambler but also an absolute treasure, prepared to help out any time, any place, anywhere. When she did a stint in Jan’s clothes shop, one critic dubbed her ‘the world’s oldest boutique assistant’. 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