I've just finished watching this last night and have to ask what hold does Poliakoff have over the BBC that they allow him time after time to basically tell the same story about old money and the establishment at such excessive length.
Agreed it was beautiful to look at, but the plot has so many holes I sometimes just laughed.
It's partly my fault because the first of his tv plays I saw was Shooting the Past and was really intrigued by the ideas, so I keep watching thinking maybe he'll get to grips with more contemporary themes.
Is it any wonder that so many people see the BBC as being the fiefdom of the over educated middle class.
I think 1950s UK was more brutal than this sort of dreamlike portrayal of issues. No way would the police have detained a white women but they certainly would have taken and probably beaten up a Black man for crossing the racial divide.
I think part of the theme (apart from the standard Poliakoff ones about the establishment) was about the younger generation being better prepared for a new future than the current genderation of parents. Both mothers were bound by convention and fulfilling their role as help mates (not partners). I think Anthony ran aware to escape from the fate of being the son of such a family. But they trapped him back in (and the grandmother understood that). But Hannah has maybe escaped family expectations and has even learned to live with the doomsday clock.
Perhaps Poliakoff could write a play where a grandson sits and listen to his grandfather drone on about how close the UK came to an army coup (although I thought that had been during the time Wilson was PM), and he says yes I've heard this a million times but what has it got to do with now!
(There does seem to be this trend in tv series to try and make 50s and 60s more politically correct eg in Endearvour, George Gently, Granchester. )