In its last years, The Dales became more sensational. Mrs Dale became a councillor, a position she had to relinquish when she caused a man's death by careless driving. A heart attack forced Dr Dale to retire from practice. Perhaps the most famous storyline was Jenny getting measles; listeners wrote in thousands complaining that she had already had measles in 1949.
When it became The Dales, the show did try to copy The Archers, which was originally a medium to disseminate information to the agricultural community, and to give an insight into rural affairs to the public. Thus medical stories became the order in The Dales. In this manner, The Dales became in the mid 1960s much like the BBC One soap opera Doctors, the plots revolving around medical conditions and problems. When the series ran a story about the importance of women having regular cervical smear tests and checking their breasts for lumps, the junior health minister praised the programme, saying it had encouraged thousands of women to see their doctor.
The serial ran for 5,431 episodes, culminating with the engagement of Mrs Dale's daughter Gwen to a famous TV professor on April 25, 1969. On news of its demise, Liberal MP Peter Bessell attempted to introduce a reprieve for the series in Parliament. The BBC Sound Archive holds only five complete episodes of Mrs Dale's Diary, and seven complete episodes of The Dales.
Read more about this topic: Mrs Dale's Diary