To the Manor Born

To the Manor Born
Genre	Sitcom
Created by	Peter Spence
Directed by	Gareth Gwenlan
Starring	Penelope Keith Peter Bowles Angela Thorne John Rudling Daphne Heard Michael Bilton Gerald Sim
Theme music composer	Ronnie Hazlehurst
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
No. of series	3
No. of episodes	22 (list of episodes)
Production
Producer(s)	Gareth Gwenlan Justin Davies (2007)
Running time	30 minutes (1979–81) 60 minutes (2007)
Release
Original network	BBC1
Original release	Original series: 30 September 1979 – 29 November 1981 Christmas special: 25 December 2007

To the Manor Born is a BBC television sitcom that first aired on BBC1 from 1979 to 1981. A special edition appeared in 2007. Starring Penelope Keith and Peter Bowles, the first 20 episodes and the 2007 special were written by Peter Spence, the creator, while the final episode in 1981 was written by Christopher Bond, the script associate. The title is a play on the phrase "to the manner born," from Shakespeare's Hamlet ("Though I am a native here and to the manner born, it is a custom more honoured in the breach than the observance.")

In To the Manor Born, Penelope Keith, who was known for her role as Margo Leadbetter in the suburban sitcom The Good Life, plays Audrey fforbes-Hamilton, an upper-class woman who, upon the death of her husband, has to move out of her beloved manor house to the estate's old lodge. She manages, however, to keep her butler, and her much loved Rolls-Royce 20/25 motorcar. The manor is then bought by Richard DeVere (played by Peter Bowles), a nouveau riche millionaire supermarket owner originally from Czechoslovakia. DeVere and fforbes-Hamilton have a love-hate relationship which is eventually resolved in the final episode in 1981, in which they marry. In the 2007 special, they celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary.

The programme proved popular and it received high audience figures for many of its episodes, especially the series 1 final episode, the most watched British television programme (excluding live events) of the 1970s. In 2004, To the Manor Born came 21st in Britain's Best Sitcom, a public poll to find Britain's favourite situation comedy.

Peter Spence first thought of the idea behind To the Manor Born in the early 1970s when he was working for BBC Radio as a gag writer. One of the programmes that Spence wrote for featured a Cockney comedian, who had recently bought a manor house in an English country village. When holding a housewarming party, the comedian invited the previous occupant, a widow who could not afford to keep the house up and had moved to a smaller house in the village. The comedian's account of the lady, and the conversation he had with her, Spence later described as a "perfect description" of Audrey.

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