Olivia Hallinan | Lark Rise to Candleford | Series Ends

Laura Timmins Goes out With a Bang!
...not literally though, that would have been great to watch but probably not allowed before the 9.00pm watershed. I am always surprised how beautiful Olivia Hallinan looks in those old fashioned dresses. I can not imagine how uncomfortable and inconvenient it would be to wear a corset. That must be a real nightmare, especially in the summer when you are drinking plenty of fluids to combat the heat. Although the summer of 2007 was not particularly warm in the UK, it was one of the strangest summers that I can remember. In June, monsoon-like rainfall flooded large areas of Britain. This included the location where Lark Rise to Candleford was being filmed and consequently disrupted the outdoor filming.

The final episode ended with the church society tea party or in other words Zillah's birthday celebrations. The grand finale was the demise of the sour faced and miserable housekeeper, Zillah (Liz Smith) much to the astonishment of young Laura Timmins and post mistress Dorcas Lane. It looks like I will have to alter at least one of the cast members for the next series in my cast list. This is not going to be a great loss to the program as this was one character that never really seemed to fit the bill. I hope that the BBC take my advice and remove Dawn French from the cast list for the second series. She was next to useless as the larger than life Caroline Arless. Considering the size of the cast for this production that is not too bad. I do have some concerns about how the BBC plan to precede with the story though. In this final episode Dorcas decided to sell the post office and go travelling with the proceeds. Laura Timmins (Olivia Hallinan) was distraught and made her feeling clear on the subject. This had all arisen when Lady Adelaide had seen her husband Sir Timothy Midwinter and Dorcas in a compromising positions. (what at tea-time?...No No No, they were just having a big friendly hug. In the end Adelaide and Sir Timothy decided to move to London. So Dorcas would not have to sell the post office after all...sadly though, she had already posted the documents via trusty devout Christian postman Thomas Brown (Mark Heap). Mark Heap is the guy who played Doctor Statham in Green Wing. He was also in the comedy sketch show "Big Train" and also played Brian (the artist) in Spaced. The man is a genius and fantastic at playing the role of people with weird personalities. He certainly added a bit of humour to the character of Thomas Brown. It was no surprise that in the final scene Thomas Brown produced the documents that had somehow not made it into the post bag.

So the stage is set for the second series next year. You have to imagine that being such a popular programme will propel Olivia Hallinan into the spotlight and get her some more television roles. Lets hope so...eh. How about a full length Hollywood film version of Sugar Rush?

The series at times was watched by over 7 million viewers. That's pretty impressive for an early evening programme. I enjoyed this series more than the recent Robin Hood, which tended to be quite silly throughout. I do like Lucy Griffiths who played Maid Marian in the series, but she was sadly killed in the final episode of series 2.

We must now wait for news of projects involving Olivia Hallinan. Let's hope it is not too long before she appears on our screens again. Until then it is DVD's, videos and television re-runs and repeats.

The End.