Pennies From Heaven (TV Series) - Overview

Overview

Hoskins became an established actor in the United Kingdom following his role in this serial. The serial was directed by Piers Haggard and produced by long-time Potter collaborator Kenith Trodd. The series also featured Nigel Havers as Conrad Baker (the suave salesman); Jenny Logan as Irene (Joan's friend); Freddie Jones as Mr.Warner (Eileen's headmaster); Michael Bilton as Eileen's dad; Will Stamp as the Barman; Tudor Davies as the cafe customer (Davies was also choreographer for the series) and Peter Bowles as the Prosecuting Counsel.

Pennies was the last of Potter's television dramas to be filmed in the 'hybrid' format of studio videotape and location 16mm film. The production involved six weeks of filming on location, most of it in Oxfordshire, but with selected shooting in the Forest of Dean (in Potter's home county of Gloucestershire, between the River Severn and the River Wye). The school where Eileen teaches is the actual Forest school Potter attended in Berry Hill, and the children who populate the school scenes were local children cast as extras. In temporary remission from his chronic condition of psoriatic arthropathy, a rare skin and joints disease that first afflicted him at the age of 24, Potter and his wife Margaret were able to visit the location shoot in Dean.

Pennies was transmitted in six episodes of approximately 75 minutes each from March 7 to April 11, 1978, on BBC1, and first repeated later that year. In the spring of the following year, Pennies won the British Academy Television Award for Most Original Programme (Hoskins & Campbell were also nominated for BAFTA acting awards). In a 2000 poll of industry professionals conducted by the British Film Institute to find the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes of the 20th century, Pennies from Heaven was placed at number 21.