Here's a lovely piece of classic TV from 1962 that was rebroadcast to mark the passing of the legendary producer/Writer Philip Mackie in 1985 - Saki -The Improper Stories of H. H. Munro - Granada TV - 1962. In 1962 Granada TV Network Productions presented 8 plays under the banner Saki, The Improper Stories of H. H. Munro (Hector Hugh Munro, better known by the pen name Saki, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirised Edwardian society and culture and he is considered a master of the short story). The stories were adapted by Hugh Leonard, Edward Boyd and Gerald Savory and directed by Silvio Narizzano. Produced by Philip Mackie. The main cast included Martita Hunt, Fenella Fielding, William Mervyn and Richard Vernon. Writing in the book Granada Television The First Generation, John Cox, former Executive Drama Producer for Granada writes: 'Although Granada's commitment to drama first of all meant television adaptations of stage plays, there were soon a respectable number of original plays in production...often in the form of series: the short stories of Saki and de Maupassant, the Feydeau farces and the Victorian melodramas. The audience were offered the security of a known quantity each week, because each story was self-contained.' Norman Frisby, who was Press Officer at Granada from 1959 to 1988 remembered that when the Drama Department came up with the series of legendary short stories and decided to bill them as The Improper Stories of H. H. Munro, actually the literary title, TV Times "...hit the roof. 'You can't do that,' bleated the billings sub. 'It'll make them sound like dirty stories.' 'We insist,' I insisted. TV Times cut the line but only for the first week or two.' Unfortunately, there appears to be very little information available on the series (all the stories that were adapted) and even the individual episodes seemed to lack a story synopsis or even a title (other than 'First programme', 'Second Programme', etc.) on the pages of the TV Times magazines (see example in side column) the weeks the episodes were shown. It is known that the following were adapted for television: The Stampeding of Lady Bastable, A Holiday Task, The Way to the Dairy, Sredni Vashtar and A Defensive Diamond. 01] Saki: THE STAMPEDING OF LADY BASTABLE/ A HOLIDAY TASK/ THE WAY IS THE DIARY/ SRENDI VASHTI/ A DEFENSIVE DIAMOND (60 min) 06-Jul-1962 ITV Network, Friday Producer: Philip Mackie Stories by H.H. Munro (Saki) Adapted by Gerald Savory, Hugh Leonard, Edward Boyd. Directed by Gordon Flemyng * Starring: Martita Hunt ............ Lady Bastable Fenella Fielding ........ Mary Drakmanton William Mervyn .......... Sir Hector Richard Vernon ......... The Major Mark Burns .............. Clovis Rosamund Greenwood ...... Veronique Brimley-Bomefield Guest Cast: June Eccles Raymond Gatenby Phillip Anthony Nora Nicholson Pamela Pichford Hugo De Vernier Phillip Locke Sonia Dresdel Paul Holdaway Daphne Oxenford Peter Bathunt Hector Hugh Munro (18 December 1870 – 14 November 1916), better known by the pen name Saki, and also frequently as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirize Edwardian society and culture. He is considered a master of the short story, and often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. Influenced by Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll and Rudyard Kipling, he himself influenced A. A. Milne, Noël Coward and P. G. Wodehouse.[1] Besides his short stories (which were first published in newspapers, as was customary at the time, and then collected into several volumes), he wrote a full-length play, The Watched Pot, in collaboration with Charles Maude; two one-act plays; a historical study, The Rise of the Russian Empire, the only book published under his own name; a short novel, The Unbearable Bassington; the episodic The Westminster Alice (a parliamentary parody of Alice in Wonderland); and When William Came, subtitled A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns, a fantasy about a future German invasion and occupation of Britain.

• published: 18 Feb 2015
• views: 21