Blue Remembered Hills

Blue Remembered Hills
Genre	Comedy drama
Written by	Dennis Potter
Directed by	Brian Gibson
Starring	Michael Elphick Robin Ellis Colin Welland Helen Mirren Janine Duvitski Colin Jeavons John Bird
Narrated by	Dennis Potter
Theme music composer	Marc Wilkinson
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language	English
Production
Producer	Kenith Trodd
Release
Original network	BBC1
Original release	30 January 1979 (1979-01-30)
Chronology
Preceded by	Pennies from Heaven (1978)
Followed by	Blade on the Feather (1980)

Blue Remembered Hills is a British television play by Dennis Potter, originally broadcast on 30 January 1979 as part of the BBC's Play for Today series.

The play concerns a group of seven-year-olds playing in the Forest of Dean one summer afternoon in 1943. It ends abruptly when the character Donald is burnt to death partly as a result of the other children's actions. Perhaps the most striking feature of the play is that, although the characters are children, they are played by adult actors. Potter first used this device in Stand Up, Nigel Barton (1965) and returned to it in Cold Lazarus (1996).

The dialogue is written in a Forest of Dean dialect, which Potter also uses extensively in other dramas incorporating a Forest of Dean setting, most notably A Beast with Two Backs (1968), Pennies from Heaven (1978) and The Singing Detective (1986).

Cast[]

The stars of the original production were:

Robin Ellis (John), Michael Elphick (Peter), Colin Welland (Willie), John Bird (Raymond), Helen Mirren (Angela), Janine Duvitski (Audrey), Colin Jeavons (Donald).

The screenplay has also been adapted for the theatre. The play is now a standard text for GCSE Drama in Great Britain.

Title[]

The title comes from the 40th poem in A.E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad.^[1] The poem is read by Potter himself at the end of the BBC version of the play.

Into my heart an air that kills

From yon far country blows:

What are those blue remembered hills,

What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,

I see it shining plain,

The happy highways where I went

And cannot come again.

"Blue remembered hills" is also the title of Rosemary Sutcliff's autobiography (1983).

External links[]

• British Film Institute - Screen Online
• Blue Remembered Hills 2012 UK Tour
• TV Cream Review
• Review of Blue Remembered Hills Production in Strode Theatre, Street, Somerset, U.K..com
• Blue Remembered Hills at Brighton Open Air Theatre, July 2017
• Blue Remembered Hills at IMDb

References[]