The Unforgettable: Wendy Craig (S1EP6 Channel 5 Sunday 6 November 2022)

Wendy Craig: In 1934, Wendy was born Anne Gwendolyn Craig in County Durham. She says that after attending a pantomime in Newcastle when she was three years old, she decided to pursue an acting career. She received her first professional acting job and an agent the same evening she performed with fellow trainee and future Sherlock Holmes star Jeremy Brett at a London drama school in the early 1950s.

By the 1960s, Wendy had established a successful career portraying frail and helpless women in classic British films like The Servant and The Nanny, costarring with actors like Dirk Bogarde, Bette Davis, and Oliver Reed. Her transition into TV sitcoms like Not in Front of the Children and And Mother Makes Three after 1967 signalled a major turning point in her career. She had the chance to combine the fragility and daffiness of her earlier screen work to create an exciting new character: the bored housewife Ria Parkinson, who was famously unlucky in the kitchen and was tempted to have an affair to spice up her unfulfilled home life. Her friends and fans concur that 1978’s Butterflies is her greatest success.

In what series creator Carla Lane called a “situation tragedy,” Wendy soon became inundated with fan mail from viewers who thought their own unhappy lives were being depicted on screen. Few understood that Lane was initially upset about Wendy being cast as Ria and thought viewers would have too many memories of Craig’s earlier work as ditzy mothers.

Thankfully, BBC comedy boss John Howard Davies convinced her otherwise. As a result of her work on comedies like Butterflies and dramas like Nanny and The Royal, Wendy developed a reputation for portraying maternally inclined characters who are sympathetic. But in one of the most distressing TV moments of 2017, the creators of ITV’s Unforgotten drama series turned that on its head by casting her as a mother who had permitted her husband to abuse their children.

Wendy is joined by her family, friends, and co-stars, including Michael Starke, David Parfitt, and Bruce Montague, who share warm memories of their time spent on set with an actor they compare to Ria Parkinson, with the exception that Wendy actually has a good sense of taste.

Airdate: Sunday 6 November 2022 at 20:00 on Channel 5

Season 1 Episode 6

Series following the lives of some of the UK’s best loved actors.