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British radio serial drama

Mrs Dale's Diary was the first significant BBC radio serial drama. It was first broadcast on 5 January 1948 on the BBC Light Programme, later BBC Radio 2; it ran until 25 April 1969. A new episode was broadcast each weekday afternoon, with a repeat the following morning. A few days after the final episode, a new serial drama, Waggoners' Walk, took over the time slot. The main scriptwriter for many years was Jonquil Antony, and her first collaborator (under a pseudonym)
was Ted Willis, later to create Dixon of Dock Green. The lead character, Mrs Dale, was played by Ellis Powell until she was dismissed in controversial circumstances in 1963 and replaced by Jessie Matthews.

An innovative characteristic of the programme was that a brief introductory narrative in each episode was spoken by Mrs Dale as if she were writing her diary. The serial centred on Mrs Mary Dale, a doctor's wife, and her husband Jim, and the comings and goings of a middle class society. The Dales lived at Virginia Lodge in the fictional London Metro land style suburb of Parkwood Hill. They had moved there from the real area of Kenton, which straddles the border between the London boroughs of Brent and Harrow. Later in the series, to modernise the programme and its setting, the producers relocated the family in the fictional new town of Exton New Town. Mrs Dale's mother was Mrs Rosemary Freeman, whom Jim always called, rather gravely, "mother in law". Dr and Mrs Dale had a daughter, Gwen, and a son, Bob, who worked in the motor trade. He was married to Jenny; they had twins. Gwen was widowed after her husband David was killed in a water skiing accident in the Bahamas where he was holidaying with his rich mistress. Mary Dale's sister, Sally, (which she always pronounced "Selly") lived in Chelsea and moved in exotic circles. The Dales and their friends (along with Captain, Mrs Freeman's cat, apparently named after the rank of her late husband, who had been killed in the First World War) got along in almost perfect harmony. It was all respectable, comfortable and middle class.

The programme is thought to be the first British mainstream drama which depicted a character known to be homosexual sympathetically in a leading part – Richard Fulton (portrayed by David March), Sally's husband. It was a brave move to feature a gay man, especially when homosexuality was still illegal in the United Kingdom. Clearly the programme's makers considered the time was right for the subject to be featured. Richard Fulton, however, was an odd character to use, in several ways. Not least is that (though apparently based on the homosexual writer Patrick White) Richard's history in the serial was heterosexual. He was in fact a character who had developed a lot, having been presented in the early days as a monster of petulance.

In its last years, The Dales became more sensational. Mrs Dale became a councillor, a position she had to give up after she had caused a man's death by careless driving. A heart attack forced Dr Dale to retire from practice. Perhaps the most famous storyline was Jenny's getting measles; listeners wrote in thousands complaining that she had already had measles in 1949. When it became The Dales, the show did try to copy The Archers, which was originally a medium to disseminate information to the agricultural community, and to give an insight into rural affairs to the public. In The Dales the plots now revolved around medical conditions and problems. When the series ran a story about the importance of women having regular cervical smear tests and checking their breasts for lumps, the junior health minister praised the programme, saying it had encouraged thousands of women to see their doctor. The serial ran for 5,531 episodes, culminating with the engagement of Mrs Dale's daughter Gwen to a famous TV professor on 25 April 1969. On news of its demise, Liberal MP Peter Bessell attempted to introduce a reprieve for the series in Parliament. The BBC Sound Archive holds only five complete episodes of Mrs Dale's Diary, and seven complete episodes of The Dales.

Over the years it ran there were a number of books written around the characters, several authored in whole or part by Jonquil Antony, the most important scriptwriter at the beginning and for many years. In 1970, the year after the programme finished, she took back her former characters after a fashion, publishing Dear Dr. Dale, a novel set after the end of the serial. In the same year Charles Simon, who had played Dr Dale in the Jessie Matthews years, did his own continuation of the story, going on tour in At Home With The Dales. This show has its place in theatre history as the first professional venture of Cameron Mackintosh, later renowned for large scale musicals. The Dales play was written by Charles Henry, who was soon discovered to be the versatile and experienced Charles Simon. Later dates in the tour were cancelled because the audience did not seem to be there. "It would have been different if Jessie had done the tour" Charles Simon remarked a few months later (to actor Roger Sansom, with whom he was in a broadcast). He was, however, the only member of the radio cast to make the transition. The play was published, but has seldom been revived. In 1972 it received an amateur production at Rugby Theatre, with Bridget Watson as Mrs Dale and Harry Roberts as her husband the doctor. The only professional revival seems to have been in 1997 at the Kenneth More Studio Theatre in Ilford, when Angela Ellis and Roger Braban played the senior Dales.

The phrase seized on by caricaturists as typical of Mrs Dale's narrative was "I'm rather worried about Jim " Indeed, the phrase was a staple of many comedy programmes, radio and television, in the early 1960s aiming to poke fun at safe, staid and undemanding middle class lifestyles. The last episode ended with Mrs Dale saying, "There's one thing that won't change – I shall always worry about Jim "

Mrs Dale's Diary was the basis of Mrs Wilson's Diary in the fortnightly satirical magazine Private Eye. The writers (primarily John Wells) presented Mrs Wilson as seeing herself as comfortably middle class, in contrast to the working class pretensions (and middle class actuality) of her husband, for example the Wincarnis (a brand of tonic wine) and the worsted suits with two pairs of trousers (Wilson was from Huddersfield, a town known for the manufacture of worsted cloth).

The programme was often a 'target' (albeit an affectionate one) on the BBC Radio comedy Round the Horne, referred to as "Mrs Dire's Dreary", with the part of Mrs Dire being played by Kenneth Williams.