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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Carrie Fairchild" data-source="post: 390378" data-attributes="member: 673">In The Cult of Howards’ Way, Tracey Childs (Lynne) mentions the arrival of Charles Frere as the point when the show went up a notch in terms of soapiness. And she wasn’t wrong. No sooner has he arrived in his Bentley with its personalised number plate and we’re plunged into revelations about lavender marriages, poison pen letters and extramarital affairs. After cruelly dumping Dawn (whose hair is getting more voluminous with each episode), Ken entices her back long enough to carry out some sort of corporate espionage that results in him finding out who actually bought the Flying Fish. He wastes no time in stirring the Howard pot by gleefully revealing to Jan that the new owner is in fact Avril Rolfe! Jan is angry about this long enough to provide us with an episode cliffhanger but has soon calmed down and is off in an evening gown for drinks at Polly’s in the middle of the afternoon. Mother of the Year Polly, admits again that not only does she not like daughter Abby (who has run away from home and is trying to become a social worker) but that she never loved her and should’ve had an abortion! Turns out that absentee husband Gerald (who has showed up in a few scenes to provide a conduit to Charles Frere’s introduction) isn’t Abby’s father. Polly was pregnant when she met him and they entered into a marriage of convenience to provide a father to Polly’s unborn daughter and to provide a wife to Gerald (for business purposes) as he is secretly gay! Abby’s father was apparently a “casual fling” although given Polly’s apparent history with the newly arrived Charles Frere, I’m wondering is he the father - Charles Frere = Casual Fling? Meanwhile Lynne, who seems to prioritise boats over everything else in her life, is nearly raped on Anthony Head’s Hooray Henry’s yacht and later wants to apologise to said assailant as “he’s her only chance to race the Fastnet”. He pours water on her attempts with a barrage of misogyny but thankfully there’s a lady with the very Howards’ Way surname of Penhaligon who’s planning on running an all female crew to the Fastnet. Charles Frere, who seems to get in where even water wouldn’t, shows up at Avril’s cottage (which Leo is redecorating with “something pastely”) and it’s revealed that he is Avril’s mystery man from London. His previously mentioned wife is in America and he wants Avril back. She throws him out and her subsequent anger and confusion proves to be a potent mix when Tom (fresh off receiving a poison pen letter from the dumped (again) Dawn, stating that Jan & Ken are shagging) turns up and they end up in each others arms.I’m halfway through series one now and it is all quite addictive. Interestingly, as I’ve mentioned before, Tom still hasn’t shared screen time with Ken and Jan hasn’t crossed paths with Avril, yet they’re the two main issues in their marriage. You can certainly see the stakes rising too. In episode one, Jan was mostly a homemaker who did a couple of mornings work a week and now she’s on the verge of opening a boutique with talks of wanting shares in the company. It’s the epitome of 80’s upward mobility. In among all of the froth though, there is a bit of social commentary thrown in via the character of Davinder aka Davy (Kulvinder Ghir). Early on, he’s threatened by a co-worker for showing initiative and working into his lunch to finish a job (“that might be how you do things where you’re from!”) and later when Abby has gone AWOL, he plays down her not recognising him when he sees her leaving his father’s surgery (“we all look the same don’t we”). He only appears occasionally but he feels like an anchor to the real world while the rest of the characters are drifting off into 80’s greed is good territory (pardon the nautical puns but the show is full of them).</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?