The Appleyards was a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 soap opera

Soap opera

A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...

 for children, made and transmitted fortnightly by BBC Television

BBC Television

BBC Television is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The corporation, which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927, has produced television programmes from its own studios since 1932, although the start of its regular service of television...

 from 1952 to 1957, from the BBC's Lime Grove Studios

Lime Grove Studios

Lime Grove Studios was a film studio complex built by the Gaumont Film Company in 1915 situated in a street named Lime Grove, inShepherd's Bush, west London, north of Hammersmith and described by Gaumont as "the finest studio in Great Britain and the first building ever put up in this country...

.

Transmitted live on a Thursday afternoon from 4.30 to 5 p.m. with a Sunday repeat, the programme told the story of the Home Counties

Home Counties

The home counties is a term which refers to the counties of South East England and the East of England which border London, but do not include the capital city itself...

 family Mr and Mrs Appleyard and their four children. A reunion programme, 'Christmas with the Appleyards' went out at Christmas 1960.

Archive status

In the show's first year (1952) the episodes were aired live and never recorded, thus no episodes from the 1952 season exist. From 1953, the episodes were indeed telerecorded, but the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 ended up wiping most of them. Only one episode of the entire run of 68 exists in television archives as of 2009.

External links

• http://www.televisionheaven.co.uk/appleyards.htm The Appleyards at Television Heaven