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Howards'
Way Jan
Harvey and Maurice Colbourne In
the first episode, the Howards' are celebrating Tom's (Maurice Colbourne)
success in winning the Commodore's Cup in his boat the Flying Fish,
but back at home after a celebratory champagne dinner, Tom drops a bombshell;
he announces he had been made redundant from his design job at Southern Aviation
a month earlier! The
Flying Fish has been slightly damaged in the Commodore's Cup event
and the boat has been taken to the Mermaid Yard in Tarrant for repair;
the Mermaid Yard is in deep financial difficulty with no large orders on
the books and only a large overdraft to support the ailing business. Jack
Rolfe (owner of the boatyard) is told by Laurie Meadows (Alan Downer)
his local Bank Manager that the bank's head office is going to foreclose on
the Mermaid Yard's overdraft, but when the yard's foreman, Bill Sayers
lets Jack know that the repair to the Flying Fish is complete, Jack
has a brainwave, could Tom Howard be the answer to all his problems
and the Mermaid Yard's saviour? Jack
then telephones Tom and tells him the Flying Fish is ready and invites
him over to the Mermaid yard, ostensibly for a drink, but by the end of
episode one, Jack had broached the subject of a business partnership. Jack
Rolfe suggests to Tom that it could be mutually beneficial for the
pair to become business partners (and the yard could do with "a capital inject.") Jack
Rolfe (Glynn
Owen) is assisted with the administration side of the business by his
daughter Avril (Susan Gilmore) who had returned to Tarrant from
London 3 months earlier and was trying to re-organize the business for her father.
Tom agrees to a partnership with Jack, but has to use his shares,
his savings and his redundancy money and also has to sell his beloved boat the
Flying Fish in order to raise enough money to buy his share in the Mermaid
boatyard. Later
in the serial there would be a dispute over the ownership of the boatyard, which
is engineered by ruthless businessman Charles Frere, played by
Tony Anholt, who wants the land for development. Tom and Jack
overcome the challenge from Frere in court and the boatyard does eventually
become successful again, with both Tom and Jack designing new boats.
The marriage of Tom and Jan (Jan Harvey) however, does not
survive; Tom has an affair with Avril Rolfe. Jan also has an affair
with Ken Masters (Stephen Yardley), owner of the local chandlery where
she works part-time. Jan later becomes involved in the fashion industry
owning a chain of boutiques. Many new characters were introduced later in the
serial which ran from 1985 until 1990 on BBC Television,with episodes of 50 minutes
duration. The opening
titles sequence theme tune was composed by Simon May and performed
by The Simon May Orchestra.
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