 Penelope Keith has achieved a careful middle-ground where performance is
translated into television terms, hovering somewhere between theatre and cinema.
Since making her network television mark as Margo Leadbetter, the
socially-conscious next-door-neighbour of Richard Briers and Felicity Kendal in
the sitcom The Good Life (BBC, 1975-78), she has brought a spirit of Noël Coward
theatre to single-syllable TV sitcom.
Her working background in provincial repertory theatre and two years with the
Royal Shakespeare Company (Stratford), as well as bit-part television roles in
drama serials such as Emergency-Ward 10 (ITV, 1957-67), provided a variety of
roles. Before her meteoric rise to fame in The Good Life, she had played support
to Phyllis Calvert in the agony aunt drama Kate (ITV, 1970-72) as an
insufferable rich bitch heiress, constantly meddling with journalism and other
people's lives.
The Good Life was one of the best-loved sitcoms of its day and made household
names of its quartet of players. With many viewers unable to identify with
Briers and Kendal's young couple adapting their modern urban skills to the
demands of traditional agrarian life, Keith's Margo, the archetype of suburban
snobbery, and Paul Eddington's easy-going husband Jerry were able to grab their
share of attention.
Along with Kendal, Keith had been signed up for The Good Life after being
seen in Alan Ayckbourn's stage hit The Norman Conquests, and when Thames TV
adapted the play for a three-part television presentation she was asked to join
Briers and Tom Conti in the cast. The 1977 ITV production featured a farcical
weekend in a family home with the same story translated from three different
viewpoints.
It seemed inevitable that To the Manor Born (BBC, 1979-81) should follow.
Written to suit her familiar upper-crust persona, the series cast her as an
upper-middle-class widow who, through bankruptcy, is forced to sell her beloved
country house. In keeping with the English love of tradition, she refuses to
compromise when her fortunes took a downward torn and begins a campaign of
polite harassment of the new owner, a mysterious millionaire tradesman (played
by the suave Peter Bowles) who starts acting like the squire. Her aristocratic
Mrs. Audrey fforbes-Hamilton was a mere step away from the snooty Margo, but she
managed to imbue the character with a sympathetic quality that made her snobbery
almost endearing.
A more restrained version of the old TV persona was seen in the comedies
Moving (ITV, 1985), about the perils of moving house; Executive Stress (ITV,
1986-88), about marital friction in a publishing house; No Job for a Lady (ITV,
1990-92), as a newly-elected Labour MP in a male enclave; and Law and Disorder
(ITV, 1994), as a forceful barrister taking on unorthodox cases. Only the
six-part Moving, based on a stage play, and No Job for a Lady allowed her to
move on from the Margo/fforbes-Hamilton typecast to more realistic performances
while retaining the imperturbable dignity that her august presence
commands.
Tise Vahimagi
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FILM & TV CREDITS
