There is still something cosy about watching ‘To the
Manor Born’. Made during the hey day golden period of the British sitcom
when families would sit in front of the telly in their millions watching their
favourite sitcoms week after week. The slot for a new BBC sitcom called ‘To the
Manor Born’ was a Sunday evening with the first episode airing on 30th
September 1979 at 8.45 with at its peak reaching an audience of 20 million,
unheard of these days. This sitcom was created by Peter Spence and starred
Penelope Keith, an actress who had become supremely popular since playing the
uptight suburban housewife Margo in another fave sitcom of the 1970s, ‘The Good
Life’. She upped her class status in ‘To the Manor Born’ to play Audrey
fforbes-Hamilton, an old money aristo who is forced to sell her beloved Grantleigh
stately home following the death of her husband, the lord of the manor. Enter
the son of a half Czechoslovakian/Polish immigrant, Richard DeVere played by character
actor Peter Bowles, by now in his 40s. DeVere is a self-made millionaire
representing new money in free market Thatcherite Britain. His real name is
revealed to be Bedřich Polouvicek who brings his equally formidable mother,
Mrs. Polouvicek (nicknamed “Mrs Poo”) to live with him. Audrey moves in with
her schoolgirl friend, Marjory to the Lodge at the entrance to the estate. And
so starts the show that will build on these characters, aided in a lesser
capacity by the wonderful Gerald Sim as the local Rector. From this there
develops a chemistry between Richard and Audrey that lasted through the three
seasons the show was on TV. Of course Penelope Keith was already a household name
and any actor going up against her had to meet the challenge. The moustachioed
Bowles as Richard DeVere more than met that challenge and soon became a
household name on British TV himself.
Distinctive with his soft features and trademark moustache, Peter Bowles had been on British TV screens for almost 20 years before ‘To the Manor Born’ and had appeared in a number of features as a character actor, rarely ever looking any different. Sadly Peter Bowles passed away on the 17th March at the grand old age of 85, leaving behind a long and fairly distinguished career on the stage as well as the big and small screens. He was born in Upper Boddington, Northamptonshire in 1936 the son of a chauffeur to the Earl of Sandwich and in 1954 he earned a scholarship to RADA. Through the 1960s he began to appear in character parts in a number of low budget features, but was mostly in character parts for TV thriller dramas and armchair theatre dramas. In the late 1960s he began to appear in relatively small roles in films, including a brief part in one of the iconic British films of the decade, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up (1966) and a memorable role in the superb The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968), both films starring David Hemmings. For the next couple of years he was being offered meatier roles,including co-starring with Nicol Williamson in the drama Laughter in the Dark (1969).
But it was on TV where Peter Bowles started making a name for himself. He appeared in episodes in many key and now cult TV shows of the late 1960s through the ‘70s, often playing villains which included episodes of ‘The Prisoner’, several ‘Armchair Theatre’ dramas, ‘Adam Adamant Lives!’, ‘The Avengers’, ‘The Saint’, ‘The Persuaders’, ‘The Protectors’, ‘Hadleigh’, ‘The New Adventures of Black Beauty’ and ‘Space 1999’ among others. His career on TV progressed through the 1970s and he began to appear in more serious dramas such as the still terrifying post-apocalyptic drama, ‘Survivors’ in 1975 which gave me nightmares as a child, as well as in the classic epic drama, ‘I, Claudius’ (1976) in which he played Caractacus followed later by the wonderful Dennis Potter surreal musical drama, ‘Pennies From Heaven’ starring Bob Hoskins in 1978. It was at about this time he began appearing in sitcoms. Before he was cast as Richard DeVere in ‘To the Manor Born’, Bowles appeared in sitcoms starting with episodes of the classic ‘Rising Damp’ and ‘Bless Me Father’ starring Arthur Lowe.
After years as a character actor, Peter Bowles found his
niche in ‘To the Manor Born’. As the 1970s morphed into the 1980s he started to
become more in demand on British television screens. Within a month of
appearing in the first episode of ‘To the Manor Born’, he would also go on to
star in a sitcom on the “other side” for ITV’s Yorkshire Television, ‘Only When
I Laugh’. A sitcom set on a hospital ward, Bowles plays Archie Glover and is
about the relationship between three male patients. The show was another
success for Bowles in this Eric Chappell written comedy which also starred
James Bolam as Roy Figgis and Christopher Strauli as Norman Binns. It also
starred the irrepressible Richard Wilson as the consultant surgeon and remained
popular for several years until it ran out of steam in 1982 after four seasons.
The 1980s was most definitely Peter Bowles decade, working as a regular in
several TV series and sitcoms that also included the long running ‘Rumpole of
the Bailey’ between 1978 -1992. He was by now starring in TV series as the lead
protagonist in a number of show’s throughout the decade that included ‘The
Irish R.M.’, ‘Perfect Scoundrels’, ‘The Bounder’ and ‘Lytton’s Diary’. In 1987
he was reunited with Penelope Keith for two seasons of the sitcom ‘Executive
Stress’ playing Keith’s husband Donald after Geoffrey Palmer was unable to
commit to the second season. In this sitcom Penelope Keith plays a middle aged
and middle-class woman who decides to return to office work after being a
housewife for years.
After a busy decade Peter Bowles went into semi-retirement on
British TV screens after about 13 years of virtually never being off our
screens. His career mostly spanned TV, though he was memorable in the Bracknell
set paedophile thriller, The Offence (1972) starring Sean Connery. Once
his career took off as a TV regular in 1978 he did not appear in a cinema
released feature film until 1995 when he starred in the little seen corporate
crime drama, The Steal starring Alfred Molina and Helen Slater. Even
then his career was sporadic on both TV and cinema, though he made an
appearance in the cult British crime film, The Bank Job (2008) starring
Jason Statham and written by prolific writers of the big and small screen, Dick
Clement and Ian La Frenais.
However, it is most likely that it will be for his role as
Richard DeVere that Peter Bowles will be remembered by most. In the last
episode of Season Three aired on 29th November 1981 Audrey had asked
Richard to marry her. In the classic tradition of a Jane Austen novel in
reverse, this marriage was not just out of love (even though of course their
rather uptight sexual chemistry was the show’s driver) but in order to save the
Grantleigh estate and home and as a bookend to the show’s first episode allows
the stately home to return to the family name of fforbes-Hamilton. But that
wasn’t the end, for in 2007 a Christmas Special of ‘To the Manor Was Born’ was
aired by the BBC on Christmas Day. The story has Richard and Audrey celebrating
their Silver Wedding Anniversary and the couple arranging for a rock concert to
be held on the grounds of the estate. Of course that a Christmas Special should
be made and televised on Christmas Day is testament to the show’s huge success
and popularity. That popularity would not have been possible without the
chemistry between Bowles and Keith. Indeed his popularity throughout the
following decade since the show’s first airing was evidence of Bowles’
popularity. Dame Penelope Keith and Bowles would appear again together in 2010
for a regional tour of Sheridan's play ‘The Rivals’, directed by Sir Peter
Hall.
Peter Bowles is survived by his wife of over 60 years, Susan and the three children they had together, Guy, Adam and Sasha.
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