Carla Lane

Writing

Carla Lane (born Romana Barrack) was an English writer and producer, known for "The Liver Birds" (1969), "Butterflies" (1978) and "Bless This House" (1971). She was married to Arthur Hollins. She was a lifelong vegetarian who inherited her interest in animal welfare from her grandfather, an RSPCA supervisor. In 1989 she awarded an O.B.E. (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) for her services to the television industry. but returned it in 2002 in protest at a C.B.E. (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) being awarded to the managing director of Huntingdon Life Sciences, a company which specialise in testing on animals.

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Filmography

Show Creator

2 titles

Bread

TV1986

Bread is a British television sitcom, written by Carla Lane, produced by the BBC and screened on BBC1 from 1 May 1986 to 3 November 1991. The series focused on the devoutly-Catholic and extended Boswell family of Liverpool, in the district of Dingle, led by its matriarch Nellie through a number of ups and downs as they tried to make their way through life in Thatcher's Britain with no visible means of support. The street shown at the start of each programme is Elswick Street. A family called Boswell had also featured in Lane's earlier sitcom The Liver Birds and Lane admitted in interviews that the two families were probably related. Nellie's feckless and estranged husband, Freddie, left her for another woman known as 'Lilo Lill'. Her children Joey, Jack, Adrian, Aveline and Billy continued to live in the family home in Kelsall Street and contributed money to the central family fund, largely through benefit fraud and the sale of stolen goods.

The Liver Birds

TV1969

The Liver Birds is a British sitcom set in the city of Liverpool, in the north-west of England, which aired on BBC1 from 1969 to 1978, and again in 1996. It was created by Carla Lane and Myra Taylor. These two Liverpudlian writers had met at a local writers club and decided to pool their talents. Having been invited to London by Michael Mills and asked to write about two young women sharing a flat, Mills brought in sitcom expert Sydney Lotterby to work with the writing team. Lotterby had previously worked with Eric Sykes, Sheila Hancock and on The Likely Lads. Carla Lane in fact wrote most of the episodes, Taylor co-writing only the first two series. The pilot was shown as an episode of Comedy Playhouse, the BBC's breeding ground for sitcoms, in April 1969.