To the Manor Born

- Season 1

(1979)

After the death of her husband, Audrey fforbes-Hamilton is faced with the prospect of losing the ancestral home to death taxes.

Death duties force Audrey to bid for the manor at auction but she loses out Richard De Vere, millionaire owner of Cavendish Foods and representative of the new money she despises. Now living in the manor's lodge Audrey is visited by Richard's mother, a Polish lady who tells her that Richard is also a Pole, born Bedrich Polouvicki. Richard believes he is hiring Audrey as his secretary and is surprised to learn who she really is.

Audrey is disgusted that new lord of the manor Richard does not go to Sunday service at the local church. Attempting to be go-between, his mother invites Audrey to dinner; she accepts on condition that next day he attends church with her. But she's the one who misses the service: the previous night, she neglected to move forward the hands of her grandfather clock for Daylight Saving Time.

When Audrey sees Richard throw out an Adam fireplace which he considers ugly, she lectures him on the need to preserve the nation's heritage, then mentions that her mantelpiece is very small. After she helps him buy a horse, she returns to the lodge to find that he has had the fireplace installed in her lounge as a thank-you gift.

To prove a point, Audrey refuses to organize the manor hunt ball as she has always done, hoping Richard will beg her to reconsider. Instead he gets Marjory to run it and escorts her to the ball as his partner, leaving an angry Audrey to stay home playing Scrabble with Brabinger the butler. Richard does come to apologize though, after which Audrey directs him home over a footbridge which she knows to be unsafe.

To keep up appearances, Audrey pretends to go on holiday to Spain, but she's actually hiding at the lodge with only Ned aware of her secret. She becomes suspicious when she sees Richard and Marjory skulking around the grounds together--but they're not romantically involved, they're only bird-watching. When Audrey 'returns' from her holiday, Richard tells her he knows her secret but agrees to keep quiet if she stops telling people he made his fortune through dodgy business deals.

To make himself appear more English, Richard decides to appear in a TV advert for Fontleroy's Old English Tonic, to be filmed at the manor and utilise Audrey's butler and Rolls-Royce. But when the film crew arrives, Audrey delights in telling the director that the manor is not Richard's ancestral home but her, and she appears in the advert herself instead of him.

Audrey and Marjory follow family tradition by building a crib for the church although it's crudely assembled. Meanwhile, the vicar asks Richard, the new lord of the manor, to contribute one, but his is a far more commercial model. Both parties claim to prefer the other. On Christmas Day, Audrey and Marjory decline an invitation to the manor but are bored and relieved when Richard and his mother come to them.