436 BBC2 Playhouse : Happy

First  viewed :  25  April  1980

This  is  one  I'd  never  have  remembered  without  Genome  to  jog  the  brain  cells.  It  was  on  at  9pm  on  a  Friday  night  and  I  watched  it  at  my  Gran's  who  had  probably  switched  channels  from  The  Gentle  Touch  in  the  hope  of  more  snooker. I  usually  went  home  as  soon  as  I'd  finished  my  chips  but  we  watched  this  to  the  end.

The  play  concerned  two  brothers  Vernon ( Paul  Copley )  and  Gary ( Max  Hafler ) . Gary  has serious  mental  health  issues  but  Vernon  persists  in  trying  to  look  after  him  at  home  rather than  put  him  in  residential  care  ( this  being  nearly  a  decade  before  the  implementation  of Care  in  the  Community ) . At  the  start  of  the  play  Vernon's  marriage  has  broken  down  because his  wife  Linda  ( Lynne  Miller )  couldn't  cope  with  the  strain  of  living  with  Gary.  He persuades  her  to  return  but  after  a  case  of  coitus  interruptus  by  Gary  playing  with  scissors , she  realises  that  she  is  less  important  to  Vernon  than  his  need  to  be  his  brother's  keeper   and  departs  once  more.

This  sad  little  story  has  never  been  repeated  and  the  writer  Derrick  Buttress  has  only  one  other  credit  on  his  imdb  page  ( a  playlet  in  the  equally  obscure  The  Other  Side  series  in  1979 ) .