After Henry is a British sitcom written by Simon Brett. It started on BBC Radio 4 and later moved to television. Prunella Scales and Joan Sanderson starred in both radio and television versions.
A novel, also by Simon Brett, followed the series. hardback, paperback
Cast Prunella Scales – Sarah France Joan Sanderson – Eleanor Prescott Gerry Cowper – Clare France Benjamin Whitrow – Russell Bryant
Plot Sarah France is the 42-year-old widow of a GP, Henry. She lives in an often volatile family situation with her mother, Eleanor Prescott, and her daughter, eighteen-year-old Clare France. After Henry's death, the three generations of women have to cope with one another as best they can, under their shared roof.
Sarah often finds herself in the middle of things, usually figuratively but always literally, as her mother lives upstairs and her daughter has the downstairs flat. Eleanor, ruthlessly cunning and emotionally manipulative, takes every opportunity to get one over on Sarah. Anything told to Eleanor will spread quickly throughout the extensive "geriatric mafia", the elderly of the area. Clare is trying to be independent of her mother, though often has to come running back in times of crisis.
The relationships among the three women change constantly through each episode. Sometimes mother and daughter ally against grandmother, sometimes mother and grandmother go against daughter, but usually grandmother and granddaughter gang up on the long-suffering Sarah, whose one haven is Bygone Books, the remarkably unsuccessful second-hand bookshop where she works for Russell, who dispenses in turn sympathy and wisdom. Most of the time, Russell sees the women's relationships second-hand through Sarah, although he isn't opposed to taking the occasional more active role when necessary. In turn, Sarah can see some of Russell's difficulties of living with a gay partner in 1980s London suburbia, while at the same time seeing Russell's relationship as the one perfect marriage she knows.
Episode list SeriesEpisodeTitleFirst broadcast11The Older Man17 April 19852Moving24 April 19853The Cowboy1 May 19854The Dinner Party8 May 19855Gossip15 May 19856Mr Right22 May 19857The Spectre at the Feast29 May 19858Going Away5 June 1985Special1A Week of Sundays22 December 198521Memory Games16 August 19862The Romantic Approach23 August 19863The Cold30 August 19864Bedside Manners6 September 19865The Kitten13 September 19866The Married Man20 September 19867The Other Married Man27 September 19868The Teapot4 October 198631Wedding Bells22 September 19872Poor Relations29 September 19873Guilty Secrets6 October 19874Lines of Communications13 October 19875Intellectual Aspirations20 October 19876A Box of Chocolates27 October 19877Different Viewpoints3 November 19878The End of a Chapter10 November 1987Special2The Season of Relative Goodwill25 December 198741Dependent Relatives17 January 19892Relative Movement24 January 19893A Fully Extended Family31 January 19894Sunday Lunch7 February 19895Little Women14 February 19896Family Album21 February 19897Keeping Faith28 February 19898Positive Thinking6 March 1989
Transfer to television
The BBC was reluctant to produce After Henry for television, so in 1988 after the third radio series Thames Television did so. Prunella Scales and Joan Sanderson returned as Sarah and Eleanor, but Gerry Cowper was, at the age of 30, considered too old to play Clare and was replaced by Janine Wood. Benjamin Whitrow was replaced in the role of Russell by Jonathan Newth. The show was popular, attracting over 14 million viewers. A second television series was shown during the same months as the fourth radio series with, in many cases, both radio and television episodes being broadcast on the same nights. The fourth television series was broadcast from July 1992, after the death of Joan Sanderson, who had died on 24 May.
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