ENTERTAINING LONDONERS

Press, 21 February 1978, Page 15

ENTERTAINING LONDONERS

The seven-part serial, “London Belongs to Me,” based on Norman Collins’ best selling book, which began on TVI on Sunday, promises to be an entertaining series full of absorbing characterisation. Even if you did not live in London before the last world war — the period in which the programme

By

KEN COATES

is set — the element of nostalgia has enormous appeal to viewers who remember the attitudes and the atmosphere of the times. Viewers of a new generation can express all the impatience at lack of action they like, but there is something quite compelling about the re-crea-tion of the rather sad relationship between Mr and Mrs Josser, for example. It was made quite clear that for their whole lives

the couple had never really expressed their true feelings to each other. She obviously did not want the shawl as a present, and the handkerchiefs were just another annual token. The first episode, set in Christmas Eve, 1938, was entirely credible — one could almost feel the cold as the elderly coat-lady who could not now remember the names of her former lovers, awakened to her cheerless Christmas morning. The script has been well adapted to provide a thread of continuity as the Thames series follows the doings of the occupants of the rooming house in Kensington. Viewers could do worse on a Sunday evening than follow the fortunes of the tenants of No. 10 Dulcimer Street.