To the Manor Born

Following her husband's passing, Audrey fforbes-Hamilton is forced to sell her stately home. While she comes to terms with her downward mobility, she decides to show the new owner a thing or two about "nobility".

Genre: Comedy, Romance

Cast:Penelope Keith , Peter Bowles , Angela Thorne , Daphne Heard , John Rudling , Gerald Sim , Michael Bilton , Betty Tucker , Anthony Sharp , Daphne Oxenford , Jonathan Elsom , Jayne Lester , Ben Aris , Dennis Ramsden , Nicholas McArdle , John Barron , Peter Penry-Jones , John Gleeson

1Season 1

S1.E1 ∙ Grantleigh

Sun, Sep 30, 1979

After the death of her husband, Audrey fforbes-Hamilton is faced with the prospect of losing the ancestral home to death taxes.

2Season 1

S1.E2 ∙ All New Together

Sun, Oct 7, 1979

Death duties force Audrey to bid for the manor at auction but she loses out Richard De Vere, millionaire owner of Cavendish Foods and representative of the new money she despises. Now living in the manor's lodge Audrey is visited by Richard's mother, a Polish lady who tells her that Richard is also a Pole, born Bedrich Polouvicki. Richard believes he is hiring Audrey as his secretary and is surprised to learn who she really is.

3Season 1

S1.E3 ∙ Going to Church

Sun, Oct 14, 1979

Audrey is disgusted that new lord of the manor Richard does not go to Sunday service at the local church. Attempting to be go-between, his mother invites Audrey to dinner; she accepts on condition that next day he attends church with her. But she's the one who misses the service: the previous night, she neglected to move forward the hands of her grandfather clock for Daylight Saving Time.

4Season 1

S1.E4 ∙ Nations of Heritage

Sun, Oct 21, 1979

When Audrey sees Richard throw out an Adam fireplace which he considers ugly, she lectures him on the need to preserve the nation's heritage, then mentions that her mantelpiece is very small. After she helps him buy a horse, she returns to the lodge to find that he has had the fireplace installed in her lounge as a thank-you gift.

5Season 1

S1.E5 ∙ The Summer Hunt Ball

Sun, Oct 28, 1979

To prove a point, Audrey refuses to organize the manor hunt ball as she has always done, hoping Richard will beg her to reconsider. Instead he gets Marjory to run it and escorts her to the ball as his partner, leaving an angry Audrey to stay home playing Scrabble with Brabinger the butler. Richard does come to apologize though, after which Audrey directs him home over a footbridge which she knows to be unsafe.

6Season 1

S1.E6 ∙ The Grape Vine

Sun, Nov 4, 1979

To keep up appearances, Audrey pretends to go on holiday to Spain, but she's actually hiding at the lodge with only Ned aware of her secret. She becomes suspicious when she sees Richard and Marjory skulking around the grounds together--but they're not romantically involved, they're only bird-watching. When Audrey 'returns' from her holiday, Richard tells her he knows her secret but agrees to keep quiet if she stops telling people he made his fortune through dodgy business deals.

7Season 1

S1.E7 ∙ A Touch of Class

Sun, Nov 11, 1979

To make himself appear more English, Richard decides to appear in a TV advert for Fontleroy's Old English Tonic, to be filmed at the manor and utilise Audrey's butler and Rolls-Royce. But when the film crew arrives, Audrey delights in telling the director that the manor is not Richard's ancestral home but her, and she appears in the advert herself instead of him.

8Season 1

S1.E8 ∙ The First Noel

Tue, Dec 25, 1979

Audrey and Marjory follow family tradition by building a crib for the church although it's crudely assembled. Meanwhile, the vicar asks Richard, the new lord of the manor, to contribute one, but his is a far more commercial model. Both parties claim to prefer the other. On Christmas Day, Audrey and Marjory decline an invitation to the manor but are bored and relieved when Richard and his mother come to them.

1Season 2

S2.E1 ∙ The New Farm Manager

Sun, Oct 5, 1980

Richard brings Spalding, his farm manager, down from London to run the estate more efficiently. Old Ned, one of the tenants, fears that he will be made homeless and, as her butler is gone, Audrey takes him on in his place. She hopes he will humiliate Richard at a dinner party she is giving, but the old chap knows how to rise to the occasion.

2Season 2

S2.E2 ∙ The Spare Room

Sun, Oct 12, 1980

The lodge's roof is leaking, so when Audrey's old school friend Diana Hodge asks to visit, she gets Richard to put her up at the manor. At school Diana was a plain, tubby girl nicknamed Podge, but now she is a glamorous divorcee and Audrey is jealous of how well she gets on with Richard.

3Season 2

S2.E3 ∙ Never Be Alone

Sun, Oct 19, 1980

With Marjory away on a theatrical residential course, Audrey is pleased when Richard asks her to help him catalogue his collection of valuable china. A recently-acquired vase worth 40,000 pounds goes missing and Audrey is the prime suspect until Richard's mother eventually admits the vase's fate.

4Season 2

S2.E4 ∙ Tramps and Poachers

Sun, Oct 26, 1980

Educated tramp Arthur Smith makes his annual visit to the manor, where Audrey had always looked out for him before. Though more concerned with the poachers who are stealing his pheasants, Richard agrees to house Arthur, but it's soon clear that Arthur is playing the couple against each other in their efforts to be the more charitable to him.

5Season 2

S2.E5 ∙ The Honours List

Sun, Nov 2, 1980

Richard decides to clear some of the trees and hedgerows from the estate to create extra farming land; appalled, Audrey leads the local conservationists in protest. Then she learns that somebody in the vicinity is in line for a knighthood and, assuming it to be Richard ,rapidly changes her political stance, though of course she is proven wrong.

6Season 2

S2.E6 ∙ Vive Le Sport

Sun, Nov 9, 1980

Audrey injures her back carrying firewood into the house, and after a visit to the doctor she exaggerates the severity of her condition so that Richard will visit her with flowers and chocolates. When she has recovered, he invites her to go skiing with him, but as a beginner he must take lessons on the estate, which go awry--leaving him the invalid.

1Season 3

S3.E1 ∙ The New Scout Hut

Sun, Oct 18, 1981

After her picnic with Marjory is disrupted by a bull, Audrey sponsors the local scouts in their raft race to raise funds for a new meeting hut and is annoyed to hear--erroneously--that Richard has refused sponsorship. In fact he has bought the boys a new hut and a grateful Audrey accompanies him on a riverside picnic, which is rudely interrupted by the raft race, which lands Richard in the water.

2Season 3

S3.E2 ∙ Station Closing

Sun, Oct 25, 1981

When British Rail announces that the local railway station will close, Audrey opposes the plan and is angry that Richard intends to turn the building into the site of his new Cash and Carry. However, the station gets a reprieve when it is chosen to serve the new school building. At least this gives Richard the opportunity to use the old school building for his business instead, and Audrey is not amused.

3Season 3

S3.E3 ∙ Horses Vs. Cars

Sun, Nov 1, 1981

Having censured Richard for polluting the environment in his new helicopter, Audrey is unable to pay for her car to be repaired. After agreeing to run a friend's riding school, she sees the answer to her transport problem: getting about on horseback. But she has a run-in with an officious traffic warden for illegally parking the horse. Horsepower does, however, offer an opportunity to give the pensioners' outing a pleasant surprise.

4Season 3

S3.E4 ∙ Birds Vs. Bees

Sun, Nov 8, 1981

Audrey takes up beekeeping and starts to do well selling her own honey until a rare bird turns up at Grantleigh. She's not happy because it's a bee-eater, but its rarity and its protected-species status ensure that people will flock to see it--providing Audrey with a steady flow of customers for her honey.

5Season 3

S3.E5 ∙ Cosmetics

Sun, Nov 15, 1981

Richard is about to sign a lucrative deal with cosmetics-firm boss Mademoiselle Dutoit, but to fend off her advances he claims to have a wife. When Marjory volunteers to impersonate 'her' for Dutoit's weekend stay, a previously-reluctant Audrey quickly jumps in, using the masquerade to have a few alterations made to the estate as the rightful lady of the manor. Richard's mother almost ruins the deception, but Mademoiselle Dutoit owns that she has known all along and is impressed by Audrey's apparent assumption of an alien role.

6Season 3

S3.E6 ∙ Connections in High Places

Sun, Nov 22, 1981

When the stockholders of Richards company threaten to throw him off the board for being an upstart foreigner, Audrey calls upon her upper crust family connections to come to the rescue.

7Season 3

S3.E7 ∙ Back to the Manor

Sun, Nov 29, 1981

Richard's position at Cavendish Foods is saved but he still needs money to keep going after buying the Argentinian plant and feels that selling the manor is his only alternative. But Audrey has had a far-better reversal of fortune: Uncle Greville has died and left her a huge sum of money. This enables her to buy back the manor as its lady twice over, as she also proposes to Richard, who accepts.

0Season 4

S4.E0 ∙ Episode #4.0

Tue, Dec 25, 2007

Married for 25 years, Audrey and Richard are feuding with another estate owner,, Archie Pennington-Booth, who sabotages them in a carriage race. Archie's farm has been doing poorly, along with other local estates, and Audrey is horrified to learn that they have been beaten in competition to supply supermarkets by Farmer Tom, a company owned by Richard. Disgusted with her husband, she leaves him and moves in with Marjory. Richard is planning a rock concert to be held jointly between the manor and Archie's farm and goes to court to apply for a license. However, Audrey turns up and is clearly disapproving, so Richard drops the idea and wins back his wife by throwing her a surprise anniversary party.