I Am A Swede

The arrogance of the big orange one never ceases to amaze me..... White House begins demolishing part of East Wing for Trump ballroom

1980 has been a bit rough so far. Too few familiar faces. Grandad is in Ireland, Joe is in America and Reverend Hinton is away on a retreat. Add to that new faces on Jack and Dolly and it almost feels like a different show. It's funny, Clive Hornby is the Jack I have most experience with, but after seeing Andrew Burt's original interpretation Clive feels too lightweight for the role. It doesn't help that Jack feels like a different character altogether since his return. If it's the writing for him or the way Clive plays him I'm not sure. Probably a little bit of both. It's a bit of the same with Dolly. Like Clive with Jack, Jean Rogers is perfectly adequate but just not really up to the standard set by her predecessor. When Dolly and Annie were talking about Dolly's miscarriage and Annie revealed that she had experienced the same all I could think of was how much better the scene would have been (in my opinion) if Katharine had still been playing Dolly. I realize they are both new in their roles, so I'll give them some leeway and let them find their feet so to speak, but right now I'm missing Andrew and Katharine a lot.

Yes she did. Well, technically I guess she died after the plane crash due to the injuries she sustained.

^^ The good old days. And I agree with the "more realism". It was baffling to see just how real things were portrayed. Frederick Pyne and Frazer Hines handled those sheeps like real farmers. I bet that was something they weren't taught in drama school!

Back to the old Emmerdale Farm episodes, and in episode 567 Jean Rogers makes her first appearance as Dolly. I'm sure I'll get used to her eventually, but she's not Katharine Barker that's for sure. Katharine had more fire right from the start and I miss her terribly. In the same episode a well-known face from the past turns up. Jenny Tomasin, best known as the dim-witted kitchen maid Ruby in "Upstairs, Downstairs". She appeared again on the show some 25 years later as the ill-fated Noreen Bell who died in the King's river development explosion caused by Cain Dingle and Sadie King.