''The Appleyards'' is a British

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...

soap opera A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television Serial (radio and television), serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio drama ...

for children, made and transmitted fortnightly by

BBC Television BBC Television is a service of the BBC. The corporation has operated a public broadcast television service in the United Kingdom, under the terms of a royal charter, since 1927. It produced television programmes from its own studios from 193 ...

from October 1952 to April 1957, from the BBC's

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. It was produced and directed by

Naomi Capon Naomi Capon (''née'' Mattuck; 17 December 1921 – 10 February 1987) was a British television director and producer. Capon was born in Amersham, Buckinghamshire and was one of the earliest female drama directors to work in British television. Sh ...

. Transmitted live on a Thursday afternoon from 4:30 to 5 p.m. with a Sunday repeat (which was not usually a recorded repeat of the first show but the same cast repeating a live performance), the programme told the story of the

Home Counties The home counties are the counties of England that surround London. The counties are not precisely defined but Buckinghamshire and Surrey are usually included in definitions and Berkshire, Essex, Hertfordshire and Kent are also often included ...

family Mr and Mrs Appleyard and their three children: John, Margaret, and Tommy. They were usually accompanied by their neighbour and best friend Ronnie Grant. The last episode concluded with Mrs Appleyard sitting on a porter's trolley at the end of a railway platform with Tommy as she announced that, as most of the family were now grown up, it was time to end the series. It was of its time but also a groundbreaking family sitcom, popular with both adults and children alike but particularly the latter who saw it as an embodiment of their own family. The catchy light music signature tune came from the Chappell Record Library and was called "Looking Around" by Colin Smith (real name is Rhys Donald Lloyd Thomas), recorded by conductor

Robert Farnon Robert Joseph Farnon CM (24 July 191723 April 2005) was a Canadian-born composer, conductor, musical arranger and trumpet player. As well as being a composer of original works (often in the light music genre), he was commissioned by film and ...

. A reunion programme, "Christmas with the Appleyards", went out at Christmas 1960.

Archive status

In the show's first year (1952) the episodes were aired live and never recorded, thus no episodes from the 1952 season exist. From 1953, the episodes were telerecorded, but the BBC ended up

wiping Lost television broadcasts are mostly those early television programs which cannot be accounted for in studio archives (or in personal archives) usually because of deliberate destruction or neglect. Common reasons for loss A significant prop ...

most of them. Only one episode (entitled "Family Treat" and originally aired on 29 December 1956) of the entire run of 68 exists in television archives as of 2017, and can be found on YouTube.

References

External links

''The Appleyards'' at Television Heaven BBC television dramas 1950s British television soap operas English-language television shows 1952 British television series debuts 1957 British television series endings Lost BBC episodes 1950s British children's television series {{child-tv-prog-stub