Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish — reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!
Last week, I celebrated the 75th anniversary of the film release for the British comedy Passport to Pimlico. Heather gave us another British author as part of her A to Z Challenge of recommended authors — W is for Jack Whyte. She wants us to read The Skystone, the first of eight historical fiction books telling the story of Camelot.
Helena Bonham Carter was a great pick to portray Noele Gordon, affectionately known as Nolly by her fans. Noele Gordon was best known for playing Meg Richardson on the ITV soap opera, Crossroads, beginning in 1964. After the death of her husband, Meg turned their home into a motel — the perfect setting for stories about running a business in a small village and about the people traveling through.
The show Nolly was broadcast in late December on ITV and on PBS Masterpiece in March, where I watched it using my PBS Passport.
In 1981, Nolly was sacked from the show in a move that displeased her and her fans. That’s the drama that is portrayed in the three-part series Nolly, all about the powers that a beloved aging actress has and doesn’t have in that situation.
We enjoyed the performances, the relationships between the characters, and the backstage peek into the lives of actors.
Don’t read this until you’ve seen the show, because there are spoilers. After watching the show, I really enjoyed learning what was fact and what was fiction: What’s Fact or Fiction in Nolly Episode 3? | Masterpiece | PBS
Have you seen Nolly? What did you think?
