Marriage Lines

Marriage Lines
Richard Briers as George Starling and Prunella Scales as Kate Starling
Also known as	The Marriage Lines
Genre	Sitcom
Written by	Richard Waring
Starring	Richard Briers Prunella Scales Edward de Souza
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
No. of series	5
No. of episodes	44 + 2 shorts
Production
Running time	37x25 minutes 7x30 minutes
Release
Original network	BBC 1
Picture format	Black-and-white, 405-line
Audio format	Monaural
Original release	16 August 1963 (1963-08-16) – 3 June 1966 (1966-06-03)

Marriage Lines is a British television sitcom first broadcast between 1963 and 1966. The series gave Richard Briers and Prunella Scales, its lead stars, a significant boost in their careers. At first titled The Marriage Lines, the programme was written by Richard Waring, and was later adapted for radio.

When Richard Waring was writing Marriage Lines, he had Richard Briers in mind, and also worked with him on Brothers in Law. Graeme Muir, the producer of Marriage Lines, also worked on Brothers in Law. In early episodes, The Marriage Lines was subtitled A Quizzical Look at the Early Days of Married Life.

George and Kate Starling are a newly married couple, and the comedy came from many ordinary domestic situations. George was a junior clerk in an office and wanted the public house camaraderie of the single men in his office, while Kate gets increasingly frustrated by her domestic duties. In the third series, Kate gives birth to a daughter Helen. The last episode of the fourth series, Goodbye George – Goodbye Kate, showed the couple going to live in Lagos, Nigeria because of George's jobs. This was meant to be the last episode, however a fifth series was commissioned. The Starlings' returned to England as Kate was pregnant again, and gave birth in the final episode.

All episodes were 25 minutes, except the fifth series when the episodes were 30 minutes long. Many episodes are missing from the television archives.

Entire series not known to survive

Entire series not known to survive

Entire series not known to survive, except where noted

Series One & Three were released on 4 February 2013.

Marriage Lines was adapted for radio from 1965 to 1967, with Richard Briers and Prunella Scales once again starring. The scripts were also written by Richard Waring. The first series, of 13 episodes, ran from 21 May to 13 August 1965 and the second series, of 13 episodes, from 19 March to 11 June 1967.

The series was repeated on BBC Radio 4 Extra from 13 October 2014 onwards.