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''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, which became Radio 2 in 1967; it ran until 25 April 1969. A new episode was broadcast each weekday afternoon, with a repeat the following morning. The main scriptwriter for many years was Jonquil Antony, and her first collaborator (under a pseudonym) was Ted Willis, later to originate equally well-known characters for ''Dixon of Dock Green''. The lead character, Mrs Dale, was played by Ellis Powell until she was sacked in controversial circumstances in 1963 and replaced by Jessie Matthews. In 1975 Matthews' biographer, Michael Thornton, wrote: On 19 February 1963, a plump and embittered fifty-six-year-old character actress called Ellis Powell walked out of Broadcasting House for the last time. She was not a star. In fact she had earned less than £30 a week. But her voice was as well known in Britain as that of Queen Elizabeth II, for it was heard twice a day by seven million devoted listeners. Miss Powell was Britain's most sacrosanct fictional paragon, Mrs. Dale, in the radio serial Mrs. Dale's Diary. And now, after fifteen years in the role she had created, the BBC had summarily fired her partly because of her drinking habits, and partly because it was felt that the role, and also the entire programme, was in need of a facelift. Three months later, at the age of fifty-seven, she died. Her friends believed she never recovered from the shock and distress of her summary dismissal by the BBC. In the last weeks of her life she worked as a demonstrator at the Ideal Home Exhibition and as a cleaner in an hotel."〔Jessie Matthews: A Biography, Michael Thornton, Published: 15 May 1975 Accessed 25 September 2014〕 == Format == 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, 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 Freeman, whom Jim always called, rather gravely, "mother-in-law". The family had one daughter, Gwen, and a son, Bob. Bob, who worked in the motor trade, 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 (and Captain, Mrs Freeman's cat, apparently named after her late husband's rank when he fell in the First World War) got along in almost perfect harmony. It was all respectable, comfortable and middle-class, although one of the characters, an artist named Jago Peters (played by a young Derek Nimmo), once tried to use a neighbour's Scandinavian au pair as a nude model. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mrs Dale's Diary」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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