In period BBC drama serial All Passion Spent, based on the novel by Vita Sackville West, Lord Slane is dead. After a lifetime spent supporting his career as Viceroy of India, Prime Minister, and elder statesman, Lady Slane (Wendy Hiller) is free at last to do as she pleases. Downstairs her children are busily deciding her future, assuming gracious compliance but Lady Slane plans to reassert her independence.
All Passion Spent is a chance for ageing luminaries Wendy Hiller, Harry Andrews, Phyllis Calvert, Faith Brook and Maurice Denham to really shine. Reviewing the production in The Stage (18 Dec 1986) Gerard Werson felt that the drama might have worked better as a 90 minute TV movie rather than a three parter. He also picked out Harry Andrews’s “beautifully judged performance, all reticence and splutter and suppressed emotion.” Hiller was also a stand out “the young Shavian heroine is now imperious, chiselled and even more beautiful.”
Cast: Wendy Hiller as Lady Slane; Maurice Denham as Gervase Bucktrout; Phyllis Calvert as Carrie; Faith Brook as Lavinia; John Franklyn-Robbins as Kay; Harry Andrews as Mr. Fitzgeorge; Hilary Mason as Edith; Geoffrey Bayldon as William; Antonia Pemberton as Mabel; Eileen Way as Genoux; Jane Snowden as Deborah; John Saunders; Patrick Barlow as Foljambe
Writer: Peter Buckman / Novel: Vita Sackville-West / Producer: Colin Rogers / Director: Martyn Friend
UK / BBC Two / 3×60 minute episodes / 9 – 23 December 1986
