Flambards

Flambards was a television series of 13 episodes which was broadcast in the United Kingdom in 1979 and in the United States in 1980. The series was based on the three Flambards novels of English author K. M. Peyton. Like the books, the series is set just before, during, and after World War I, and tells how the teenage heroine, the orphaned heiress Christina Parsons, comes to live at Flambards, the impoverished Essex estate owned by her crippled and tyrannical uncle, William Russell, and his two sons, Mark and Will Russell. Other cast members included Sebastian Abineri as Dick Wright, Anton Diffring as Mr Dermott and Rosalie Williams as Mary. Four episodes were directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark, and four others by Michael Ferguson. In 1980 Flambards was broadcast on American television by PBS who cut the series from 13 episodes to 12 by combining the first two episodes into one. PBS also added narration to the end and beginnings of episodes informing viewers of the events which had been affected by the cuts. In the late 1980s Flambards was shown on the A&E cable network in its full 13 episodes, but heavily commercial-edited.