Daughters and Sons

Synopsis

A dark domestic comedy by one of English literature’s most distinctive and idiosyncratic authorsLife in the Ponsonby household is an emotional battleground, where tyrannical grandmother Sabine and her equally despotic daughter Hetta struggle to control the fate of the family. Caught in the crossfire are Sabine’s son John, a self-absorbed novelist; his five children, Clare, France, Chilton, Victor and Muriel; and Muriel’s beleagured governesses.When John’s daughter, France, completes her first novel, she is persuaded by her father to publish it under a pseudonym to spare him the embarrassment of being overshadowed by his own flesh and blood. This act of selflessness sparks a series of deceptions, misunderstandings and manipulations: culminating in a family crisis which plays out across the dining-room table over the course of one hair-raising and hilarious dinner party...First published in 1937, Ivy Compton-Burnett’s deft dissection of a dysfunctional Victorian family was acclaimed by contemporary critics and admired by Virginia Woolf for its ‘bitter truth and intense originality’. This sublime adaptation, featuring an ensemble cast including Patricia Lawrence and Ann Mitchell, breathes new life into her brilliant, blackly comic tale.Production creditsWritten by Ivy Compton-BurnettAdapted by John SpurlingDirected by Liane AukinPiano: Martin GoldsteinCastSabine Ponsonby – Patricia LawrenceHetta – Ann MitchellJohn – John RoweClare – Tessa WorsleyFrance – Kathryn HunterVictor – Simon HewittChilton – Graham BlockeyMuriel: – Pamela MoiseiwitschMiss Bunyan – Merelina KendallGertrude – Narissa KnightsCharity Marcon – Anne JamesonStephen – Bernard BrownAlfred – Christopher GoodSir Rowland Seymour – Arnold DiamondJane – Ellen McIntoshEvelyn – Daniel WebbEdith Hallam – Vivian PicklesDr Chaucer – Robert LangMiss Blake – Fidelis MorganMr Russell – John Forbes-RobertsonFirst broadcast BBC Radio 4, 10 May-9 June 1985© 2025 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2025 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd