Felicity
Kendal first emerged as a
favourite actress in British situation comedy in the 1970s
and went on to vary her
repertoire with television dramas, films,
and stage plays with
considerable success. She spent her childhood
in India and had an early
introduction to the theatre on
tour with the Shakespearean
company run by her parents, both
established theatrical
performers. She made her debut
on the London stage in 1967 and
subsequently confirmed her
reputation as a popular stage
star with appearances in such
plays as Alan Ayckbourn's The
Norman Conquests (1974), Michael
Frayn's Clouds (1978), Peter
Shaffer's Amadeus (1980), Tom
Stoppard's Hapgood (1988), and
Chekhov's Ivanov (1989), for
which she won the London Evening
Standard Best Actress Award.
Kendal's theatrical links
secured for her a first
television role in The Mayfly and the Frog, which
starred John Gielgud, and she
made a good impression in
supporting roles in such
subsequent productions as Man in
a Suitcase, The Woodlanders, The
Persuaders, Edward VII, and Home
and Beauty, among others.
Producers liked her girlish good
looks and bubbly confidence and
audiences too quickly warmed to
her.
Kendal's whimsical, puckish
charm and endearingly
good-humoured outlook made her
ideal for the role that was
destined to establish her as a
television star--that of Barbara
Good in the BBC's The Good Life,
in which she partnered Richard
Briers as a suburban couple
determined to lead a life of
independent self-sufficiency.
Loyal to the point of lunacy,
and ever-fetching even in
mud-stained jeans and knotted
headscarf, she won universal
praise as the pert and
long-suffering young wife of
Briers, striving to understand
the frustrations of her wayward
cereal
designer-turned-smallholder
husband as he painfully sought
to put some meaning back into
his life by turning their
Surbiton house and garden into a
small-scale farm. The
accessibility of the central
characters, perfectly played by
Briers and Kendal, with Paul
Eddington and Penelope Keith as
their neighbours the
Leadbeatters, ensured stardom
for all four of them and a
lasting place for all four
performers in public affections.
As a direct result of the
programme's success, the number
of smallholdings in Britain shot
up to a record 51,000 by 1980.
After four seasons of The Good
Life, the way was open for the
four
performers to develop their own
solo careers. Kendal herself was
showcased in two further sitcoms
that centred around her alone.
In Carla Lane's Solo she
returned to the theme of
self-sufficiency,
playing Gemma Palmer, a
vulnerable but resolutely
independent
30-year-old woman who throws out
her faithless boyfriend and
gives up her job in an attempt
to reassert control of her life.
In The Mistress, a rather more
controversial sitcom also
written by Carla Lane, she was florist Maxine,
trying to cope with the guilt
and confusions involved in carrying
on an affair with the married
Luke Mansel (played by Jack
Galloway). Some viewers disliked
this last series, objecting
to the girlish and rather
innocent Felicity Kendal they
remembered from The Good Life
wrestling with such a dubious
issue as adultery as she awaited
her lover in her cosy pink flat,
in the company of her pet
rabbits, and pondered how to
keep the affair secret from
Luke's suspicious wife (played
by Jane Asher).
Always an intelligent and
sensitive actress, Kendal has
been by no means confined to
sitcoms, however. By way of
contrast, in 1978 she played
Dorothy Wordsworth in Ken
Russell's biopic Clouds of Glory
and later on she appeared with
success in the miniseries The
Camomile Lawn. In Honey for Tea,
though, she was back in more
familiar sitcom territory,
playing American widow Nancy
Belasco.
-David Pickering
s a direct result of the
programme's success, the number
of smallholdings in Britain shot
up to a record 51,000 by 1980. 
