Andrea says, 'One friend said to me quite recently, "How on earth do you manage to write about the things you do, when you lead a very quiet life and don't see that many people?" I was quite offended. And its success propelled Andrea to a certain stardom herself, although, even then, the question of how a seemingly genteel former teacher managed to think up such debauchery was a puzzling one.Īpparently, it continues to be so, even among those who know her. 'Bouquet', as Andrea calls it, was a TV triumph, redefining how miniseries were made, and making household names of its stars, Frank Finlay and Susan Penhaligon. Or, as writer Clive James more pithily put it at the time, 'By the end, everybody had been to bed with everybody else, except the baby.' His wife, meanwhile, was having sex with her son-in-law, who was in turn playing dangerous, sometimes violent sex games with his wife. With its themes of infidelity, sexual jealousy and incestuous desire, Bouquet Of Barbed Wire, her 1969 novel, broke many taboos and, when it was made into a TV series in 1976, had audiences watching aghast.Įveryone, it seems, was shocked at the plot, which had a father seemingly lusting after his daughter while having an affair with his secretary. With her unassuming manner and appearance, it's hard to believe that Andrea Newman is responsible for one of the most shocking pieces of entertainment of our times. Oh well.Scandalous storyline: Susan Penhaligon starred in the original version of Bouquet Of Barbed Wire However, it’s extremely unlikely that many of those watching A Bouquet of Barbed Wire will have come away from the experience with this message, quite the reverse in fact. But they’re really there to protect us from others and others from us. We think moral boundaries are there to keep us prisoner. In the end the lives of all the main characters end in ruins. Gavin destroys his relationships with everyone. Cassie destroys her relationship with Prue as well. Peter destroys his relationships with his work colleagues, his wife and his daughter. The sex revolution was all about transgressing moral boundaries and it still is.īut while A Bouquet of Barbed Wire at one level seems both a product of and a flag-flyer for, the sex revolution, it can also be looked at in an entirely different way, namely as a warning about what happens to people’s lives when moral boundaries are transgressed. The story on which the original series was based was written in 1969, as the sex revolution was hitting its stride, and by 1976, when the original series aired, it was in full stride. What was shocking, and to some people thrilling, about the story, is that the characters transgressed so many moral boundaries. Meanwhile Peter is having an affair with a co-worker. Her mother, Cassie, gets dragged in and ends up having a brief fling with Gavin. Prue finds herself in the middle of a battle between them for her affections and she uses this to manipulate both of them. Prue becomes pregnant and marries Gavin, much to the fury of Peter. The character around whom all the action centres is Prue, the university-age daughter of Peter who is unhealthily obsessed with her. ITV aired a remake over the last three weeks of the (for its time) shocking 1976 TV series, A Bouquet of Barbed Wire.
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