Program Title
Bramwell, Series 3

Episode number:
1 2 3 4

Description
At the Bramwells, celebrations are in full swing to honor Roberts forthcoming election to the Royal College of Physicians. One of the guests is Sir William Fredericks, President of the College and an old friend, together with his rather feckless but likeable son Martin. Robert and Eleanor are allowing Martin to shadow them at work, as medicine is his latest choice of profession. A mysterious woman arrives at the house and turns out to be Roberts estranged sister Emily. She ran off 20 years before with a married man. She fled to India, taking with her a sizeable selection of the family jewels. Robert wants to nothing to do with her but Eleanor pursuades him that he is paranoid about an old scandal no one will care about and that Emily has changed. The two women get along; Emily is fresh and fun and amused by her careerist niece. Eleanor also deals with real emotion and crisis when Dr. Marshams two-year-old daughter Molly is admitted to the Thrift with diptheria. The experience undoes the taciturn Scot and he confesses his passion for Eleanor in a moment of awful weakness

Original broadcast date
1997-11-16

Cast	Characters
Jemma Redgrave	Dr. Eleanor Bramwell
David Calder	Dr. Robert Bramwell
Richard Pasco
Cheryl Campbell
Andrew Lincoln

Credits

Producer: Harriet Davison, Tim Whitby
Director: Kate Cheeseman, Paul Murton, David Tucker, Paul Unwim, Tim Whitby

Intro
BRAMWELL/Episode 2/Intro by Russell Baker

The curse of many a well-known man is the inconvenient relative -- the relative he wishes he didn't have.

He may love this relative too dearly to wish he had never been born. But on bad days, he wishes it anyhow.

This is the relative with some all too human vice…

…A passion for alcohol…

…Maybe a gaudy sex life or a weakness for easy money…

…A compulsive urge to amuse the press with jokes about his famous relative.

A lot of our Presidents have suffered this curse since the turn of the century. I could name a dozen or so between Teddy Roosevelt and Bill Clinton, but we're not here to gossip. The inconvenient relative is at the heart of tonight's story.

Eleanor Bramwell and her father are both doctors. Eleanor runs a charity clinic in East London. Robert is a more august figure. He treats a higher class of people in London's West End.

He and Eleanor make up the tiniest of nuclear families. Robert is a widower and Eleanor his only child, her mother having died in childbirth.

The Bramwells' tiny family of two may seem terribly lonely at times, but it has one distinct advantage over bigger families. It can never suffer the curse of the inconvenient relative.

Unless, of course, somebody has been holding back a family secret.

Bramwell, Episode two.

Extro
BRAMWELL/Episode 2/Extro by Russell Baker

Out of India Emily came, back to India she goes.

It was a favorite Victorian method for disposing of people: Send them to the far side of the earth.

Far out of sight, far out of mind.

At the end of David Copperfield, there is the tough question of how to end the wonderful story of Mister Micawber. Dickens doesn't have a good solution. So he simply sends him off to Australia.

Australia began colonial life as a faraway disposal sight for England's criminals. India had more social cachet than Australia. In Victorian times it was the British equivalent of America's Western frontier.

There were fortunes to be made in India, glory to be had for the soldiers of Britain's Indian army.

It was a place for adventurers, for people who wanted social status but couldn't get it in England's closed society.

Aristocratic families used it to dispose of sons who behaved scandalously. Also younger sons who couldn't inherit, so had to make their own way.

Winston Churchill went. He was considered a dud who'd never amount to much if he stayed in England.

For Masterpiece Theatre, I'm Russell Baker. Goodnight.



Episode number: 1 2 3 4




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