Shillingbury Tales (1980 - 1981)

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Shillingbury Tales was a British television sitcom comedy-drama series made by ATV for ITV and broadcast 1980-81. Comprising a single feature length pilot and six one-hour episodes, the series deals with life in an idealised fictional English village and stars Robin Nedwell, Diane Keen, Nigel Lambert, Jack Douglas, John Le Mesurier, Bernard Cribbins and Trevor Howard. It was preceded by a feature length pilot episode The Shillingbury Blowers starring Trevor Howard, broadcast 6 January 1980 The series was written by Francis Essex and directed by Val Guest. Unusually for a British situation-comedy at that time it was recorded entirely on location on 16mm film and consequently there was no laughter track. Much of the filming took place in the village of Aldbury in Hertfordshire. The show ended when ATV lost their licence to broadcast and their replacement Central declined to continue production of the series. The series was broadcast in a number of countries around Europe.