Julia Lockwood
Compact was a British television soap opera shown by the BBC between 1962 and 1965. The series was created by Hazel Adair and Peter Ling, who together went on to devise Crossroads. In contrast to the kitchen sink realism of Coronation Street, Compact was a distinctly middle-class serial, set in the more "sophisticated" arena of magazine publishing. An early "avarice" soap, it took the viewer into the business workplace, and aligned the professional lives of the characters with more personal storylines. The show was scheduled for broadcast on Tuesdays and Thursdays, thus avoiding a clash with ITV's Coronation Street on Mondays and Wednesdays. When Compact began, the editor was a woman, Joanne Minster, yet it was not long before she was replaced by Ian Harmon, the son of the magazine's owner. Despite being largely criticised by reviewers, Compact was popular with the general public, and in 1964 a regular omnibus edition was introduced, broadcast on Sundays. Morris Barry, a some-time actor and BBC director – he directed several Doctor Who stories in the 1960s – took over as producer and was given a brief to spice the series up in view of the criticism it had received from the national press. But the BBC, never comfortable with the concept of soap opera, quietly dropped the series in 1965.
A young woman marries a gentleman farmer who may have murdered his first wife.
Magazine editor Valerie Carr lives in London with her two daughters Jan, aged seventeen, and Poppet, thirteen. When Jan is invited to a party at the Savoy, she meets dashing young Tony Ward Black mad about jive, owner of a Bentley, and supposedly running through a legacy. Attracted to the daring young man, she rejects Mark, a young farmer who is in love with her. But it soon becomes apparent to everyone but Jan that neither Tony's fortune nor even his name may be his own, and her association with him will lead her into delinquency and danger.
In a home for delinquent girls, the worst offender exchanges reminiscences with the warden.
