I remember well this adaptation of a romance of Exmoor although I was only seven/eight years old at the time. I agree with the previous reviewer that Jane Merrow's lovestruck but helpless (in the power of the brutal Doone clan) Lorna was the character's definitive portrayal but Bill Travers's strong but sensitive gentle giant John Ridd ran it close. There were other very fine and memorable characterisations from the likes of Jean Anderson, John Bennett and Andrew Faulds (as Carver Doone) and these were indicative of the serial in that each member of the Doone and Ridd families stood out as an individual, as did such supporting characters as Jeremy Stickles, John Fry, Gwenny Carfax and Betty Muxworthy. My favourite episode depicted the Doone raid on the Ridd farm (the aims of the raid being abduction, arson and murder) and during which Carver Doone and his grisly gang (including Charleworth Doone, Phelps and Marwood de Whichehalse) met the unexpected resistance of Captain Stickles and his four troopers as well as the Ridds themselves! The Doones were quite unused to this sort of resistance from the country folk whom they periodically terrorised and I still remember Counsellor Doone demanding of a chastened Carver the reasons why the raid had failed to the extent of two members of the clan losing their lives and two more being hauled off to Taunton Jail. 'We knew nothing about the troopers!' was Carver's exasperated reply. My only regret at the time of transmission was missing the whole of Episode 9 as we were on holiday in a hotel at Littlestone that Sunday and (this being 1963) did not have access to a television set! From its title, this was the episode which tied in the action of the novel to its historical background: the unsuccessful Monmouth rebellion of 1685. It is very regrettable that all eleven episodes of this serial are believed lost as it would have made a first-rate DVD release fifty years after its transmission.
Review of Lorna Doone
