Format
The serial centred around Mrs Mary Dale, a doctor's wife, husband Jim, and the comings and goings of a middle-class society. The Dales lived at Virginia Lodge in the fictional London Metro-land-style suburb of Parkwood Hill. They moved there from the real area of Kenton, which straddles the border between the London boroughs of Brent and Harrow. Later in the series, to modernise the programme and its setting, the producers relocated the family in the fictional new town of Exton New Town.
Mrs Dale's mother was Mrs Freeman, whom Jim always called, rather gravely, "mother-in-law". The family had one daughter, Gwen, and a son, Bob. Bob, who worked in the motor trade, was married to Jenny; they had twins. Gwen was widowed after her husband David was killed in a water-skiing accident in the Bahamas where he was holidaying with his rich mistress. Mary Dale's sister Sally (which she always pronounced "Selly") lived in Chelsea and moved in exotic circles. The Dales and their friends (and Captain, Mrs Freeman's cat, apparently named after her late husband's rank when he fell in the First World War) got along in almost perfect harmony. It was all respectable, comfortable and middle-class, although one of the characters, an artist named Jago Peters (played by a young Derek Nimmo), once tried to use a neighbour's Scandinavian au pair as a nude model.
Read more about this topic: Mrs Dale's Diary