 Until well into the 1970s, Paul Eddington was confined to comic parts in the
theatre and a mixed bag of roles on television. The arrival of the sitcom The
Good Life (BBC, 1975-78) changed that, leading to a rich succession of West End
roles in plays by Alan Ayckbourn, Michael Frayn, Tom Stoppard and Terence
Rattigan.
Although theatre (from training at RADA and early days in repertory
productions) consumed most of his working time, he began appearing on television
from the mid-1950s, taking various parts in series and serials such as Dixon of
Dock Green (BBC, 1955-75), Kenilworth (BBC, 1957; as Edmund Tressilian), The
Buccaneers (ITV, 1956-57) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (ITV, 1955-59). He
played so many parts in the latter series that eventually, in 1958, he was given
the regular role of Will Scarlett.
After Robin Hood he continued as a supporting player for television: some
were serious roles in dramas like Interpol Calling (ITV, 1959-60), Maigret (BBC,
1960-63) and The Avengers (ITV, 1961-69); there were also comedy parts with
Jimmy Edwards in The Seven Faces of Jim (BBC, 1961).
His rare forays into cinema, once again in supporting roles, ranged from the
charmingly sentimental Baxter! (1972) and The Amazing Mr. Blunden (both d.
Lionel Jeffries, 1972) to the Hammer horror The Devil Rides Out (d. Terence
Fisher, 1967).
In 1974 he was cast in Ayckbourn's Absurd Person Singular at the Vaudeville
Theatre, London, opposite Richard Briers. BBC head of comedy John Howard Davies,
then scouting for a new ensemble TV comedy, saw a performance and signed-up
Eddington and Briers; Davies also approached Felicity Kendal and Penelope Keith,
who were appearing together in Ayckbourn's The Norman Conquests. The Good Life
was born.
Eddington was Jerry Leadbeatter, the mercilessly hen-pecked husband to
Keith's superb parody of suburban snobbishness, Margo. While the alternative
lifestyle trials of Briers and Kendal as avant-la-lettre ecologists Tom and
Barbara Goode, took centre stage with their back garden attempts at
self-sufficiency, it was often their reproachful neighbours, Jerry and Margo,
who claimed the biggest laughs. The smooth good humour provided by Eddington's
Jerry, a sort of Ariel to Keith's Prospero, always kept things ticking over when
the Goodes were on the brink of defeat.
But it was Yes, Minister (BBC, 1980-82), a precision-crafted Whitehall
satire, that brought him his greatest success. Essentially a two-hander, with
Eddington as well-meaning MP Jim Hacker and a briskly effective Nigel Hawthorne
as the polite but determined Permanent Under-Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby, the
series' popularity was due in part to the excellent scripts (by Anthony Jay and
Jonathan Lynn) and to the leading players' Jeeves and Wooster relationship. Sir
Humphrey's outwitting of the slow-thinking Hacker was central to the series'
rhythm, with the narrative, stealthily (but not always effectively), taking on a
Faustian dimension. Even so, the programme remained consistently inventive in
its imagination and overall tact, and there was less evidence of straining after
parody than the BBC had shown before.
The series returned as Yes, Prime Minister (BBC, 1986-88) after Hacker's
promotion to high office, and while his Hacker continued to bumble and dither as
before, he became more accomplished in his verbal skirmishes with the wily Sir
Humphrey. In 1987, Baroness Thatcher, who as Prime Minister was a fan of the
series, appointed him CBE.
For the four-part miniseries The Camomile Lawn (Channel 4, 1992), directed by
Peter Hall, he was reunited with Kendal in a pre-war/post-war saga of a
discordant English family, adapted from Mary Wesley's much-acclaimed second
novel. Despite being a viewing fixture in its time, the TV adaptation was
condemned by the author herself.
Although a battle with skin cancer restricted his later appearances, he
performed alongside his old friend Briers in 1994 in the stage play, Home, about
two elderly men in a mental institution.
Tise Vahimagi
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FILM & TV CREDITS
