HOUSEWIFE 49

05 December, 2006 by The_Boss

ITV1 Sunday 10th December 2006 9:00pm to 11:00pm

Award winning writer and performer Victoria Wood has written and stars in her first ITV drama for 25 years set in wartime Barrow-in-Furness.

HOUSEWIFE, 49 is based on the real diary of a Lancashire housewife and follows Nella Last’s struggles to come to terms with her difficult marriage, and the fact that her beloved sons have grown up and no longer need her.

The story begins in the first strange weeks of the Second World War, and Nella, who is recovering from a nervous breakdown, fears she will not cope with her younger son Cliff (Christopher Harper) leaving to join the army.

Cliff, anxious about his mother, encourages her to find an outlet for her feelings by writing a daily account of her life for Mass Observation, a government linked project aimed at examining the lives of ordinary people.

Nella finds the diary a way of saying all the things she can’t express to her husband (David Threlfall – Shameless, The Queen’s Sister, The Last Detective), and it strengthens her determination to help the war effort in spite of his reluctance to let her leave the house.

She joins the local Women’s Voluntary Service, run by Mrs Waite (Stephanie Cole – Doc Martin, Back Home, Tenko) and Mrs Lord (Marcia Warren – The All Together, Murder In Suburbia, Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky), and the companionship and sense of purpose she finds there gives her the joy and energy that is missing from her difficult marriage.

As her relationship with her husband goes through painful changes, Barrow suffers its own blitz and Nella, happily ensconced with her WVS chums, receives a telegram to say that Cliff’s troop ship has been torpedoed.

Victoria Says: “The Women’s Voluntary Service was an organisation set up a year before the war aimed at helping communities during air raids. The idea was there would be a housewife on every street telling people what to do. It turned into a massive organisation with a depot in every town and the women would make bandages, raise money, hold raffles, meet evacuees from the station and run canteens. Their motto was ‘We never say no!’ which of course caused some hilarity among the men in the forces.”

“In the WVS Nella was admired for her diligence and energy. She made dolls and knitted and cooked and everyone liked her for who she was. When you read the diaries you feel that she flowers at the WVS. She goes from being on the verge of tears all the time, melancholic and very low to a high when she gets this charge of adrenalin – not from the war but from the companionship.

“These days if someone was depressed or in a very difficult marriage they would seek help from a doctor or counsellor but it never crossed Nella’s mind. In the diary they seem to settle for having a companionable marriage. Her dilemmas are not whether she should stay but how she copes with the relationship as she changes and starts to stand up for herself for the first time.

“The war liberated Nella as it liberated lots of women and I think what is so awful is that as soon as the war was over and the men came back from the forces, these women were expected to retreat back into the home and leave those jobs open for the men. So that door closed for them which must have been dreadful.

“I’ve left it ambiguous at the end of the drama but my thought was ‘what on earth will Nella do now?’ They were sending celebration rockets up into the sky but what would Nella do once the war was over? Would she have the strength to open a new door?”

HOUSEWIFE, 49 is the story of one ordinary woman’s war, and how those six years changed her perception of herself, her friendships and her marriage.

Nella (Victoria Wood) is depressed and isolated; she is just recovering from a breakdown and she worries that the departure of her beloved son Cliff, who’s just been called up for military service, will tip her into another depression. Her husband ( David Threlfall) is unsympathetic, his only wish is to keep Nella at home and keep the rest of the world at bay.

Missing her son desperately, and not wishing to let him down, Nella follows his suggestion of writing a daily diary for the newly formed Mass Observation Office in London. The act of writing allows Nella to discover aspects of herself that had been hidden during her marriage, and she braves her husband’s scorn to join the Women’s Voluntary Service, a mainly middle class organisation headed by the formidable Mrs Waite (Stephanie Cole).

As Nella slowly finds some self confidence and energy, she becomes less passive in her relationship with her husband, and he in turn is baffled and disconcerted by the change in her. Nella’s life is expanded and enriched, but underlying everything is the warmth and support she receives from her son, Cliff (Christopher Harper).

Barrow is not much touched by the war to start with, it’s too far from London to be affected by the Blitz of 1940. But in the spring of 1941, the shipyards of Liverpool and Barrow are targeted, and many streets, Nella’s amongst them, are badly bombed. Nella’s daily help Evelyn (Sian Brooke), Cliff’s first girlfriend, is amongst the dead. Cliff feels guilty about his safe billet in Chester as a PT instructor and hints to Nella he may volunteer to go abroad and fight.

When Cliff does eventually volunteer, his father blames Nella for encouraging him to follow his heart. They have a painful argument, and Nella says things that she has bottled up for years. She shocks both of them. After that night they begin to sleep apart.

Nella throws herself into her WVS work, working shifts in a Forces’ canteen and finding premises for a Red Cross shop which she plans to run with her team of WVS pals. As she cheerfully sorts stock ready for the shop’s opening, her neighbour, Mrs Whittaker (Sally Bankes), arrives with a telegram - Cliff’s ship has been torpedoed and he is missing. Again, Nella’s husband blames her and they become even further estranged.

Cliff is rescued unhurt, but he has changed towards Nella, he seems to have no feelings for her, and she is left scared and stranded in her lonely marriage.

Everything seems to crumble at WVS too, as her adored mentor Mrs Waite ages rapidly with the stress of the war, and becomes jealous and difficult. Nella feels the glass walls of her depression growing back up around her.

Nella’s war is not the stuff of newsreels, there are no heroics, no Vera Lynn. It’s about a woman in her kitchen scribbling on bits of paper with a stubby pencil, trying to find the courage to face up to who she really is.