Lizzie Dripping

Lizzie Dripping
Title card for the episode Lizzie Dripping By The Sea. All episodes had simple titles set against this moving background image.
Created by	Helen Cresswell
Starring	Tina Heath Keith Allingham Sonia Dresdel Geoffrey Matthews Barbara Mitchell Candida Lucy Rowe Jane Lowe Sheila Raynor Graham Roberts Caroline Rowe David Barson Tom Georgeson Ann Morrish
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of episodes	8 (excluding pilot on Jackanory Playhouse)
Production
Running time	25 minutes
Release
Original network	BBC1
Original release	13 March 1973 (1973-03-13) – 19 March 1975 (1975-03-19)

Lizzie Dripping (released in its second year under the title, Lizzy Dripping Again) was a British television children's programme produced by the BBC in 1973 and 1975. It was written by Helen Cresswell and set in the country village of Little Hemlock, where a young girl, Penelope, with a vivid imagination (played by future Blue Peter presenter Tina Heath) encounters a local witch (Sonia Dresdel) whom only she can see and hear. This singular ability is further complicated by the fact that Penelope has established a reputation for being an imaginative liar, making it even more difficult for her to convince others that her witch is real.

In 1972, the makers of the long-running children's television series Jackanory started to develop new story-telling format. Whereas Jackanory had been a simple 15-minute reading of a story, designed to encourage children themselves to read, the new Jackanory Playhouse would be a full-cast anthology series dramatizing traditional folk tales. The producers of Playhouse, however, quickly made an exception for noted British children's author, Helen Cresswell. She was commissioned to write a wholly original play, and delivered Lizzie Dripping and the Orphans. It is unclear whether this was originally meant to be a pilot, but following the success of the December 1972 broadcast, a full series of Lizzie Dripping was ordered by the BBC.

Unlike other BBC properties by Cresswell, Lizzie Dripping's status as a series based on previous novels is somewhat ambiguous. The characters and situations were original to the so-called pilot. The first series followed too closely on that pilot for Cresswell to have written and published books in the intervening time. However, the 1975 series was mostly based upon three Lizzie Dripping novels that she had published in 1974. Thus, the property is a mixture of elements which first appeared on television and some that first appeared in print.

The show's location work was filmed in Eakring, Nottinghamshire, which was, at the time, Cresswell's home. The episodes were directed by Paul Stone, who had been a director on Jackanory since 1969 and would later spend the 1980s producing some of Britain's top children's dramas.