...And Mother Makes Five is a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 sitcom

Situation comedy

A situation comedy, often shortened to sitcom, is a genre of comedy that features characters sharing the same common environment, such as a home or workplace, accompanied with jokes as part of the dialogue...

 that aired on ITV

ITV

ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...

 from 1974 to 1976. Starring Wendy Craig

Wendy Craig

Wendy Craig is a BAFTA Award winning English actress who is best known for her appearances in the sitcoms Butterflies, ...And Mother Makes Three and ...And Mother Makes Five...

, it is the sequel of ...And Mother Makes Three

...And Mother Makes Three

...And Mother Makes Three is a British sitcom shown on ITV from 1971 to 1973. Starring Wendy Craig, it was written by Peter Buchanan, Peter Robinson and Richard Waring...

and aired for four series. ...And Mother Makes Five was written by Richard Waring

Richard Waring (writer)

Richard Waring was a British television scriptwriter.The author of numerous sitcoms from the early 1960s, he is particularly associated with writing domestic sitcoms. His first success was Marriage Lines with Richard Briers and Prunella Scales...

, Brian Cooke

Brian Cooke

Brian Cooke is a British comedy writer who, along with co-writer Johnnie Mortimer wrote scripts for and devised many of the top TV sitcoms of the 1970s, including Man About the House, George and Mildred and Robin's Nest...

 and Johnnie Mortimer

Johnnie Mortimer

Johnnie Mortimer was a British scriptwriter for television.He started out as a cartoonist, which brought him into contact with his writing partner Brian Cooke...

. Wendy Craig also wrote some episodes under the pseudonym Jonathan Marr. It was made for the ITV

ITV

ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...

 network by Thames Television

Thames Television

Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992....

.

Background

This sitcom was the follow-up to ...And Mother Makes Three

...And Mother Makes Three

...And Mother Makes Three is a British sitcom shown on ITV from 1971 to 1973. Starring Wendy Craig, it was written by Peter Buchanan, Peter Robinson and Richard Waring...

, which had finished in June 1973. The final series had seen Sally Harrison, a widowed mother of two, marrying the antique bookseller, David Redway, the widowed father of one. The two families then became one. The two sitcoms had almost exactly the same cast, although Miriam Mann had been replaced by Maxine Gordon

Maxine Gordon

Maxine Gordon is a British actress who is perhaps most famous for her role as Jane Edmonds, the child victim of the 1972 Sidney Lumet film The Offence. She has also had notable roles in the sitcom ...And Mother Makes Five as Jane Redway, and the drama series Midnight is a Place as Anne...

 in the role of Jane Redway. In 2004, they came joint 96th in Britain's Best Sitcom

Britain's Best Sitcom

Britain's Best Sitcom was a poll conducted in 2004 by the BBC, to identify the United Kingdom's best situation comedy. Viewers were asked to vote for their favourite by phone, text message and on the web. The top ten went forward to a final round of voting...

.

Cast

• Wendy Craig
  Wendy Craig
  Wendy Craig is a BAFTA Award winning English actress who is best known for her appearances in the sitcoms Butterflies, ...And Mother Makes Three and ...And Mother Makes Five...
  
   - Sally Redway (formerly Harrison)
• Richard Coleman
  Richard Coleman
  Richard Coleman was a British television and stage actor.-Early life:He was born Ronald Coleman in Peckham, London in 1930. Coleman was awarded the Leverhulme Scholarship to RADA in 1951, and graduated in 1953 with the Principal’s Medal...
  
   - David Redway
• Robin Davies
  Robin Davies
  Robin Davies was a Welsh television and film actor.-Early life:Robert Richard Davies was born in Tywyn, Wales and was educated at Gladstone Park School. He trained to be an actor at the Ada Foster Stage School....
  
   - Simon Redway (formerly Harrison)
• David Parfitt
  David Parfitt
  David Parfitt is a film producer and actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1998 for Shakespeare in Love....
  
   - Peter Redway (formerly Harrison)
• Maxine Gordon
  Maxine Gordon
  Maxine Gordon is a British actress who is perhaps most famous for her role as Jane Edmonds, the child victim of the 1972 Sidney Lumet film The Offence. She has also had notable roles in the sitcom ...And Mother Makes Five as Jane Redway, and the drama series Midnight is a Place as Anne...
  
   - Jane Redway
• Valerie Lush - Auntie Flo
• Charlotte Mitchell
  Charlotte Mitchell
  Charlotte Mitchell is an English actress and poet.She was once the girlfriend of Peter Sellers, hence her occasional appearances on The Goon Show in the 1950s. Charlotte Mitchell was married to actor Philip Guard and is the mother of 3 children, actors Christopher Guard and Dominic Guard and...
  
   - Monica Spencer
• Tony Britton
  Tony Britton
  Anthony Edward Lowry "Tony" Britton is an English actor. He is the father of presenter Fern Britton, scriptwriter Cherry Britton and actor Jasper Britton.-Life and career:...
  
   - Joss Spencer
• Patricia Routledge
  Patricia Routledge
  Katherine Patricia Routledge, CBE is an English character comedy actress and singer. She is best known for her role as character Hyacinth Bucket in the British television series Keeping Up Appearances and Hetty Wainthropp in the British television series Hetty Wainthropp Investigates...
  
   - Mrs Fletcher

Plot

...And Mother Makes Five is basically the same as ...And Mother Makes Three with domestic problems being the centre of the programme. The children are now older, but as troublesome as before. There are new characters in the form of Joss and Monica Spencer, and Mrs Fletcher.

Series One (1974)

1. "Where Our caravan Is Resting" (1 May 1974)
2. "The Matter of Tiny Feet" (8 May 1974)
3. "Seed of Suspicion" (15 May 1974)
4. "To the Aid of the Party" (22 May 1974)
5. "Wish You Were There" (29 May 1974)
6. "If I Can Help Somebody" (5 June 1974)
7. "Fair Exchange" (12 June 1974)

Series Two (1974)

1. "Love's Labours Lost" (22 October 1974)
2. "Double Standards" (29 October 1974)
3. "Bridging the Gap" (5 November 1974)
4. "For Richer For Poorer" (12 November 1974)
5. "Date Data" (19 November 1974)
6. "Part of the Furniture" (26 November 1974)

Series Three (1975)

1. "Growing Pains" (4 June 1975)
2. "Goodbye Mr Turnbull" (1 June 1975)
3. "Friends and Neighbours" (18 June 1975)
4. "The Mating Test" (25 June 1975)
5. "Legs Eleven" (2 July 1975)
6. "Art For Art's Sake" (9 July 1975)
7. "Recharging the Batteries" (16 July 1975)

Series Four (1976)

1. "Words and Pictures" (7 January 1976)
2. "None So Blind" (14 January 1976)
3. "Love Is A Most Confounded Thing" (21 January 1976)
4. "Unlicensed Premises" (28 January 1976)
5. "Sally's Diary" (4 February 1976)
6. "Jobs for the Boy" (11 February 1976)

DVD releases

Now that all four series of its predecessor ...And Mother Makes Three have been released. Network

Network DVD

Network DVD is a DVD publishing company that specialises in classic British television. In particular, it has the rights to a number of well-known ITV programmes...

's now currently planning schedule DVD releases to release all four series of ...And Mother Makes Five on DVD in the future.

DVD	Release date
The Complete Series 1	TBA 2011
The Complete Series 2	TBA 2011
The Complete Series 3	TBA 2012
The Complete Series 4	TBA 2012
The Complete Series 1 to 4 Box Set	TBA 2012

External links

• ...And Mother Makes Five at Nostalgia Central