The Country Party - Starring Peter Barkworth 

I was 16 when this was broadcast. People are so insulting about the 1970's -I suppose because of the industrial upheaval - endless strikes etc. But, the culture was so much finer than today. (Apart from the architectural vandalism which was horrific). Popular music and television were superb - unmatched by anything today. Just for an hour or so I can go back and immerse myself in genuine excellence, something we took so much for granted then. Thank you.

Very well put together performance, wonderful to see so many long forgotten faces and the superb Peter Barkworth. Thank you so much.

Great to watch Peter Barkworth after all these years. Thank you!

Those were the days when the duration of a television play is not shoe horned into the straight jacket of a schedule slot. Once again this brilliant cast carry it off.

Great thank you, anything Peter Barkworth is in is worth watching superb actor. ❤️

Stuart Fanning: Thank you so much for this, Peter Barkworth was a family friend, so I remember both him, and also Joshua Le Touzel (David) who was at my Stage School, with much affection, great being able to see this again, after all those years, and brings back such fond memories of two fine fellow Actors, I had the pleasure of knowing.

Always like Peter Barkworth so cool and charming, great times the 70’s

How could I have forgotten Peter Barkworth? He was on the telly all the time when I was young. Fabulous actor with a beautiful plummy voice. It’s a shame the quality of this recording is poor, but it’s still very enjoyable for all that.

Superb acting, I remember watching it when it was first shown.Thank you.

a delight to watch, times when everything was so much more tasteful than today.

Brilliant play... also see Saturday Party with the same cast, both are excellent!

This was good - it’s held up very well.

Marvelous. Fascinating insight into a lost world

Many thanks RU-vid for helping to highlight and preserve the quality of British television,and given us the opportunity to view episodes that I for one have never seen before 👌🏾

Well written and well acted. Very enjoyable! An interesting time capsule but with some universal truths.

Brilliant acting. Thank you for posting 😊

Peter Barkworth could accomplish more standing still for several seconds than most other actors could do in two hours. Amazingly subtle and beautiful.

Thoroughly enjoyed this. Love the “stuffy middle class” theme, at least you can understand them.

I’ve watched Saturday Party and the whole series of Telford’s Change, absolutely scintillating. Peter Barkworth was an amazing actor and many others of his time. They seem to capture the Englishness of what was becoming an ever changing world in their time.

These are a fascinating time capsule. I was only 8 years old at this moment but I feel a very strange nostalgia for this culture of my parents.

Amazing. Thanks for posting.

This series was originally screened on British tv back in the late 1970's, but i was too young to be able to take interest in it at the time, but now i have luckily found this Gem on RU-vid, i am really enjoying watching it. I noticed the two very young Birds of a feather working in the kitchen! (Pauline Quirke and Linda Robson) who both went on to greater things! ...... Incidentally, Peter's character gave us a glimpse into the future, when he was conversing with the unconventional couple as he said to them, "until we have telephones with televisions attached to them, we cannot see who we are booking in!" Many thanks for resurrecting this wonderful blast from the past for me! xxxxx

Thank you for uploading. 👌💕

The pregnant girlfriend meeting wife, I was not expecting that. Then I see the actor who played the vicar is called Colin Farrell. Very enjoyable.☘️

70s the best era to grow up in as a child; everything was interesting and new, and there was excitement and positivity about the future. Despite the terrorism of the IRA, we still went about our lives happy and got on with building our dreams. Each Christmas morning was an almost magical moment, and apart from the news: British television was still it its golden age. From the cinematic cerebral masterpieces of the 70s, to the film factory churned out inferior remakes of today: there is no comparison.

It's nice to see the guests know how to use a knife and fork.

I wish people would stop complaining always about having perfect quality with watching because you can’t have ever watched old video tapes if you expect the quality to always be as good as modern video and RU-vid quality and it is from 1977 after all what do you expect And about the number code at the top it doesn’t bother me really at all and it’s interesting to see aswell and it’s just because of it being a bbc copy too.

This reminded me of just how repulsive smoking in restaurants was. Great play, love Peter Barkworth.

Good story. Life is something that unfolds while we're making other plans.... not sure who said that, but it's very often true.

thanks for this first class noursihment

Ahhh. The slower paced and quiet pause of 1970s TV storytelling and broadcasting. It sure beats the ear assaulting rushed abrasive ness and degenerate dark story content of today.

The opening scene looks like the vicarage in Miss Marple’s the Murder at the vicarage

Ha! Linda Robson and Pauline Quirk in the Kitchen! I’ll keep an eye out for Dorian

thanks for posting. been searching for a while. mark shivas production.

I loved it !

Brilliant!

Definitely needs new staff! Thank you for the two, very enjoyable uploads.

This was aired the year I was born. A curious look into life across the pond at that time.

Love the ending! :)

Superb drama.

Great drama!

Nice twist at the end..

love it

Superb. Thank you. ☺ The skill of the actors doing things and talking at the same time is impressive. Each person played their part!

Peter Barkworth is so middle class in this role and Telford's Change (where he did not change at all) it almost hurts to see.

Touch of the Fawlty Towers about all this.

And again thank you RU-vid!

The Vicker has a passing resemblance to David Walliams..

The pubs were great though!!

I wish I could watch this movie but I can’t because of the flashing numbers on it. Thank you for uploading I’ll try to find it another way ❤

I feel like I am there with them. "If Only"

Peter Barkworth was a great actor (Telford's Change) but a great pity about the needless intrusive timer

For anyone who thinks this about "nothing": So much in here that reveals little chippings away at the fabric of society. at 39:00 the wife agrees to split up a property that was an integrated traditional farm so she can get more $$. The publisher laughs at a joke made by his author uneasily and a little too much, knowing that he himself doesn't really understand the joke and hoping the author doesn't cut into his profits. The "loyal" employees are cheats. The ex-wife is a piece of work, unsupportive, completely oblivious to why Richard gave up his money grubbing profession in the city. And when her daughter tries so hard to bring her parents back together she even asks "why is it so important to you?" Say what??? The young gate crashers don't even appreciate how he goes to extra trouble to accommodate them. Bottom line--the dissatisfaction and mean spiritedness of spoiled people who don't give a thing to anyone and think the world owes them everything they want. Sad all around, and our protagonist is just trying to have a decent life that doesn't rob or insult anyone. Then comes a subtle change and we see a touch of the warm humane in various people. A very human story well told.

as a film maker myself, my only regret about past film is that 16mm never lasts as well as 35mm, but of course, TV Budgets could not stretch to full-frame stock sadly. I hope one day, perhaps using new technology, in the future, every 70s film shot on 16mm can be not just restored but brought up to modern standards and colourized, as it was shot: I'm sure this could be done one day, although the costs of course, would be questionable. The videotape studio scenes from the 70s, still look ok, thanks to the quality of the equipment used, even back in those days!

It seems that Ted is now getting success with his tomatoes and, as a result, has moved away from the dreaded tomatoe chutney to more of life's delicate perks. He's definitely made progress.

Didn't his menu sound FABULOUS! Proper going-out-to-dinner-best-frock food not the sort of twiddled morseld we get nowadays.

Great, but why that timer???

He lives in Folkestone

Mrs Warboys, one foot in the grave,,

👍🏻

The scene at 43:40 the scene when outside couple come in, does anyone get the feeling a lot of the other people dining at the restaurant are staring them down judgemental stares as if they’ve never seen anyone in different clothing from theirs. The woman in the background at 44:05 definitely shows that I think in the blue dress staring daggers at them , it’s like saying to her “Oi you keep your nose out of other people’s business and affairs and get on with your own.” It’s also like “what the heck are you staring at eh?”

Good Lord! Mrs. Warbouys! AND Pauleen Quirk & Linda Robson! Were they conjoined twins lol.

I wonder how some of the wives at the restaurant got lumbered with some of those husbands in the first place. 🙂

This grass is growing too s l o w l y.

😮So this was middle class... interesting!

A relief to see no performative hugging, high-fives and perpetual neuroses and emotional incontinence.

‘You’re a reed’ ...!

Is that Arthur Daley?

What a collection of cnuts. They're so desperate for fools gold and meanwhile trach the only thing they have of real value. Very good production. Thank you.

Everyone has a public school accent and uses upper class language (apart from the servants ofcourse!)

And Susan never said she wanted someone to keep her in horses and clothing everything else as you said you old hazbeen.

Wow another classic play, best stick something annoying and distracting on the screen!

Shades of Fawlty what!

All of these plays from this period featured endless drinking of alcohol.

19:32

There was more class in those days in comparison to nowadays. People today have lost their breeding.

Gosh the daughter Emma in the story seems very much kind of jumping the gun especially the fact that she arranged this dinner at her father’s restaurant in the country without much permission from the rest of the family and without her mother knowing and she’s got a sarcastic kind of classy cheekiness about her and just very kind of an adult thinking that she’s the arranger for all of this and kind of vivacious in a manipulative sort of way tricking with her mother, and as well did the thought not strike any of the family members especially the children that their father may have divorced and that he had remarried in a way it is Richard’s fault I think partly with him to blame just that he must have been desperate to be in a relationship with another woman but then again it should be a free country for him shouldn’t it as he had divorced anyway previously from his wife Jane but then it’s understandable on one hand why seeing his new wife there would be a shock and the family would be disappointed and as well I would have thought that Richard would have informed Jane or Emma that his current wife would perhaps visit later on and join them and it doesn’t seem much of a family occasion by the end of the play with Richard’s new wife dropping by like that and nothings mentioned about Richard’s new wife really for most of the play before as if they really didn’t know that much before even though they left each other I would have thought they could have stayed in contact with each other with telephoning each other perhaps.

Supurb

For the price of a duck.

🤢 that's sick server girl with the nose blowing... this is why I say a protection prayer with every meal if I eat out🙏

What a miserable man! Had everything, had nothing.

Oh ! A St Georges flag in opening scene . Wouldn't be allowed by BBC today . Not " diverse " enough and might offend new Britons..

Have these women no respect for male privacy, and shameless springing of "surprises" as part of their instinctive manipulations?

not my cup of 'judging the women' harshly-tea.

A middle class 1970s borefest Hoorah!!!!!

What a stupid story...all about nothing..

Fascinating to go inside the lives of the middle classes. Richard was a tremendous and selfless host.

"It's pronounced 'Bucket''"