In the days when I was a cameraman at Thames TV I met an actor called Guy Slater. We became and still are friends. Guy also created and ran the Horseshoe Theatre in Basingstoke. He then became a TV producer. So when the BBC asked him to produce a new series called ‘Nanny’ he asked me to direct 9 episodes of the first series and more in the second series. (years later Guy joined me to create the series ‘Small Stages’.)
“Created by the actress Wendy Craig ‘Nanny’ was a BBC television series that ran between 1981 and 1983. In this historical drama, Wendy Craig stared as nanny Barbara Gray, caring for children in 1930s England. When Barbara Gray leaves the divorce court she has no money, no job just an iron will and a love for children. “
Wendy was first noticed for her role in the film ‘The Servant’ playing beside Dirk Bogarde in 1963 where she won the most promising newcomer award. She was awarded a best actress award in 1969 and was awarded a CBE. Her TV fame came when starring in the very long and successful series ‘Butterflies’.
Years later I bought the rights to a novel by Dirk Bogarde, Voices in the Garden, and produced a film of it for the BBC.
When Wendy Craig submitted her proposal for the series to the BBC she used the pseudonym Jonathan Marr because she was afraid that if her true identity was known she would be dismissed as merely “an actress who thinks she can write.
The structure of the series was that Nanny went to work in a family with children for three episodes and then moved on to another family. Thus each director made a story of three episodes. I made three stories, nine episodes, in the first series and one story in the second series making twelve episodes in all. Guy asked me direct more but I feared being a ‘Nanny’ director for too long.
